


Aileron Spin

by cognomen



Series: Pilot Superstition [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Adventure, Anal Sex, Complete, Cunnilingus, Excitement, F/M, Kidnapping, M/M, Mostly plot with some porn, Multi, Polyamory, Rescues, Sex Pollen, Space Dogfights, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M, X-Wing(s), plant babysitting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 04:29:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 45,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9219098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: Poe pours the X-Wing into a long upward incline, hands on the yoke and guiding, eyes on the HUD and alert for any strange vibrations coming through his contact with the ship . Keeping the nose pitched up, he opens the ailerons out in a leisurely way. Left up, right down, and Poe pilots Black One into a slow roll as he listens for signs of stress on the fusial thrust engines. He feels through his grip and seat for any sensation of rattle.For a few long seconds he flies inverted, leaving the belly of his ship bare to the sky.Everything's different in atmosphere,he thinks as the wind howls past.A sequel to Second Circle, set int he Pilot Superstition 'verse. Rey, Finn, and Poe are given an assignment to recover General Calrissian from behind a Hutt blockade, and nothing quite goes according to plan...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

>   
>   
>  art by [ Paperheartlines@Tumblr](http://paperheartlines.tumblr.com/)  
> Beta Reading by [ Bjomolf@Tumblr](http://bjomolf.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Created for the Star Wars Polyamory Big Bang!

Poe pours the X-Wing into a long upward incline, hands on the yoke and guiding, eyes on the HUD and alert for any strange vibrations coming through his contact with the ship . Keeping the nose pitched up, he opens the ailerons out in a leisurely way. Left up, right down, and Poe pilots Black One into a slow roll as he listens for signs of stress on the fusial thrust engines. He feels through his grip and seat for any sensation of rattle.

For a few long seconds he flies inverted, leaving the belly of his ship bare to the sky. _Everything's different in atmosphere,_ he thinks as the wind howls past.

He's oriented because humans have a strong sense of up and down, of what side should face the ground. A survival instinct. In space, you ignore it. Poe can fly up, down, and sideways with no challenge. Whatever's under the belly of Black One became the new down, what's over the canopy is the new up. Simple. He'd never bothered considering what orientation was correct.

Now he _has_ to - air pushes on Black One, holding it up by the way it's driven through and under the S-foils. He has to fight against his instincts for up and down. The engines work harder in atmo, use up more fuel to compensate for the de-emphasized aerodynamic qualities of a space fighter.

Poe pulls the X-Wing over again. No sign that the repairs are going to fail. He reaches up and turns on the send switch for his communicator.

"This is Black Leader to ground team," he radios, knowing that Vober Dand has authorized a very specific set of diagnostic maneuvers. 

"You've done a beautiful job on repairs. Everything's holding together up here so I'm going to go ahead and take it to phase 2."

He could just _do_ it. That would be the wisest - if no one was looking that closely, they might not have even noticed. _Where's the fun in bucking the rules without an audience?_

"Black One this is ground crew. No phase two is authorized."

Poe works two switches and throws the yoke all the way left, sending Black One over and over in a twist until the G-Force brands an impression of the flight harness against his shoulders and his insides shift around within his ribcage. It's one long, breathless moment where his mind and body are part of Black One.

Then he pulls out of the sideways roll and becomes aware of the radio silence. _Everyone's looking, now._

The ship feels good. His arm feels good. Nothing is weaker after the repairs. 

BB-8, nonplussed by his aerial acrobatics, gives him a report on registered stresses that passed through the frame and vibration levels as well as engine thrust required for the maneuvers. 

All within normal operating expectations. Poe grins. It feels good to be in the air again. It'll feel even better when he can get back into space, but he's already going to be in trouble. Breaking atmo would _really_ be pushing it.

"Are you quite finished?" Dand's stern tone comes over Poe's comm.

"Just making sure no parts were getting loose," Poe says. "Besides, your ground team's got my full confidence. They wouldn't let me fly if they weren't sure Black One could give me what I asked."

A long, disapproving silence answers Poe's glowing compliment.

"You are cleared to _land_ , Commander Dameron," Controller Dand says, using a tone that suggests he do so.

"Understood, ground control," Poe says, with an eye on his fuel gauge and a glance out the canopy.

He decides when the landing field is in sight that if he's in trouble already...

He pitches Black One's nose up sharply, until it's not air holding the X-Wing aloft but only the engines pushing them through the atmosphere.

An alarm warns about the angle of attack and Poe trips the switch to dismiss it, turning off his comm transmissions at the same time.

"We are not a plane," Poe mutters. "We are now a rocket."

BB-8 questions his decision. Poe lets the droid worry about it, cutting upward like a knife until he can see the fine blue line at the edge of the atmosphere and feel gravity begin to lessen its hold.

_Just a little bit more..._

BB-8 beeps a warning that he's on the edge of space, black sky and stars calling him all the way down in his soul. Poe cuts the engines and for a moment he hangs weightless, neither climbing nor falling.

He eases the yoke back toward himself, turning the X-Wing over in an n-shaped loop into the fall. 

They're so high up that it seems the fall will last forever. Even as gravity really takes hold, silence cradles them until the nose of Black One finds air. Then the rush of atmo flying past as he plummets at terminal velocity.

Peace suffuses him even as he turns over and over into a barely controlled tumble. He can feel every twist and flip in his gut and the silence from the comm under BB-8's thrilled whistle. The droid trusts him enough to enjoy the risks as much as Poe does. 

He'll be in trouble when he lands. So he gets the most out of his fall, pulling up at the last second to level off. He finds his horizon, sets the angle of attack for gentle lift and turns all four of the engines on.

Ten minutes later, Poe sets Black One tamely on the landing platform and goes to face the music.

-

He comes out of the debriefing appropriately chastened but with high spirits. He'd managed to keep from smiling in General Organa's presence. The rest will blow over in time.

"You're actually a pretty good pilot," Rey tells him, falling into step with Poe outside the debriefing room.

Poe's smile wakes in that easy way it tends to around Rey. He doesn't have to hide it from her. "You're surprised?"

"Well if seeing is believing," Rey says, clearly teasing him. "I _saw_ you after one crash and heard you put a TIE fighter down pretty hard, too."

Poe gives her a sceptical glance. "And you'd do better?"

She gives a cocky sort of 'nobody knows' shrug that strongly suggests she thinks she could.

Poe doesn't even doubt it. She is, after all, a Jedi.

"I survived stealing a TIE Fighter from a star destroyer," Poe says. " _and_ I put it down in one piece after taking a direct hit, saving your boyfriend."

It's just air, bragging that doesn't mean anything. For a little while, Poe had kept it to himself trying to get a feel for Rey before he realized she was just as good at talking big talk as any other pilot.

"Uh huh," she says, raking a critical look over him. "He's your boyfriend, too. What about the second time?"

"I switched hyperspace lanes," Poe reminds her. " _In_ hyperspace."

Her cool gaze cracks into a smile.

"I'm not even worried about it," Poe continues. "Black One is fine and without the crash I wouldn't know you as well."

Accepting the compliment, she nudges Poe's shoulder with her own, one of the few sorts of casual contact she's starting to be familiar with. He likes it, though he's careful not to push her boundaries.

"Besides," Poe says. "We can't all be Jedi."

"I'm not so sure," she says, looking at Poe with a little mischief. "You know that General Organa could have been a Jedi?"

Poe thinks that makes a certain sort of sense. Considering it, he shakes his head. "Have you ever seen her lose her temper? I'm glad she can't literally kill anybody with her eyes."

"I can't imagine her angry," Rey admits.

"You'll see someday," Poe assures her, adding, "you're a lot like her, you know."

"Should I be flattered or worried?"

"That's your decision," Poe tells her. "Where's Finn?"

"You're transparent," Rey tells him. Poe doesn't try to deny it. 

"He's down at his briefing," she tells him. "You stayed in the air so long that he was late."

"Oh, a late _Commander_ ," Poe says, with a juvenile level of amusement. "Wonder what they've got him doing?"

"He's presenting what they found on those planets they tried searching for you," she reveals. "When we need to evacuate again, there were one or two that would support a base."

Poe makes a face. "Not the one I was stuck on?"

"Well," Rey says. "It would be different with shelter and proper equipment, but Autiornac III is not the top candidate."

"It has a name?"

Rey eyes him. "People name everything."

"I'm just glad it's not 'Dameron's Last Rest'," Poe says. "Well, I gotta go take a shift cleaning hyperdrive manifolds. If you see Finn before I do, tell him I'm looking for him."

Rey gives him a smug look that makes no promises. "If I find him first he's mine, flyboy."

-

Despite her threat, they're both waiting in Poe's quarters when he escapes his chore. Rey is sitting on the edge of his bed, Finn at her feet. Poe is filthy, covered in grease to the elbows. 

"I was wondering what was keeping you," Rey says, with a mischievous grin.

"I had a date with a mop," Poe says, holding the door open to let BB-8 roll in. "I couldn't talk the steamer into covering for me."

BB-8 greets Rey and Finn cheerfully, and rolls up to Rey’s knees to solicit her affection.

"How was your flight?" Rey asks BB-8, earning a technical elaboration that she listens to even if it's more information than she probably wanted. She smiles, all attention for the droid.

"How was your meeting?" Poe asks Finn. He closes the door behind himself and sits on the floor next to him where he can lean back against the bed.

"I was late," Finn says, like it might be the end of his world. "Nobody said anything so I didn't know if I should _apologize_ or if I should just _start_. Admiral Ackbar is impossible to read. How do you know if he's angry?" 

Poe, completely unable to help himself, makes an old joke . "His skin turns red."

Finn looks mortified, adorably so. He puts one hand over his mouth pensively, as if seeking a way to fix all the worries of the world.

"Poe," Rey scolds. "He's Mon Calamari, Finn. His skin is _always_ red."

"That's not true," Poe says. "First thing in the morning, he's as pink as his tumblebunny slippers."

Rey looks at him, eyes narrow, a contrast to Finn's disbelief. Poe holds the court of their attention like a valuable thing, a golden and precious bauble. He _loves_ it when they're both looking at him. He feels like the center of the universe.

"He does _not_ ," Rey starts.

Poe nods, knowing the truth. "Try the mess hall at 4:15 am."

Rey looks absolutely intrigued. Poe foresees an adventure, on a small scale, in the future. A very early adventure.

"So he wasn't mad?" Finn asks, pulling the conversation back from the brink of a crazy plan. 

"No," Poe says. "He's dealt with Rebels and Resistance for years. He knows that we're not always the most professional."

Finn sits back against the bed, clearly relieved. Rey reaches out and gently runs her fingers through his hair, soothing.

"Rey said you were looking for me?" Finn says, after a moment of comfortable silence.

_Always,_ Poe thinks, in an unguarded moment of honesty. 

"I found you," Poe says, instead. He reaches out, over the duracrete floor of his quarters - the fourth such spartan set of rooms he's had since leaving the New Republic at General Organa's beckon - and takes Finn's hand. "Sometimes, I just like to know where people are."

Rey laughs at him, but it's without malice. She laughs because she understands, and Finn squeezes his fingers like he does too, and Poe knows he's _really_ really in trouble then. He's down under the surface in a way he doesn't have the luxury for, and diving.

"So, that was some flying," Finn says. "How much trouble did you get in?"

Poe gets to be the center of their world for a little longer while he explains. They listen with bright eyes and youthful features and he feels the odd man out. Aware, as he gets sometimes, of the years behind him. 

Right now, though Rey's had a birthday in the interim and Poe's still looking at his thirty third as upcoming, the years feel like a weight, an albatross at his neck. 

A barrier.


	2. Chapter 2

Finn can't get any work done in his office. It's too quiet, too isolated. As a Commander, he shares the space with two others of the same rank - but never at the same time. Poe, of course, is rarely there. The other captain, a woman by the name of Haren Wrenn, stops by occasionally but does most of her work in the field.

It leaves the office to Finn most days, and he guesses other people might like the quiet, but he hates it. Sometimes, there's a note from Poe and he likes _that_ well enough but the quiet, the lack of interruptions, that gets to Finn. Slowly.

His paperwork - on actual flimsi at times - is even worse. Endless lists of requisitions requests and inventory on hands and quotas, are interrupted occasionally with an actual mission request or report.

It's a little overwhelming for a boy who worked in sanitation.

Finn gets everything sorted, and then glances at the time.

_That late? Already?_

Finn is going to miss dinner if he stays any later. He gets the urgent stack together into a folder and carries it with him to the mess hall.

_I always think better with a full stomach_ , Finn thinks, _and a crowd._

Something about being surrounded by noise and action is reassuring, familiar. It's easier to focus. Finn doesn't like to think about why that's familiar and comforting - doesn't want to admit that there's anything from his former life that he needs to keep.

In a way, that feels like a betrayal of what the Resistance has given him, to still need it. But the instant he sits down at the officer's table, elbow to elbow with men and women who are happy and at ease, he feels better, more focused. He gets enough space to spread out his reports next to his lunch and all his ability to focus returns in a rush.

He eats his dinner with one hand and makes notes or signs orders with the other. It has the added effect of reminding Finn to eat slowly. Here, no one would take his food away if he doesn't eat it fast enough. It's taken some getting used to.

The food tastes pretty good too. Finn knows it's simple fare, cobbled together from whatever supplies could be scavenged, but it's still better than the staple paste he'd eaten day in and day out in the First Order. More satisfying.

"You know," Poe's voice proceeds him by half a second, before his tray is set down next to Finn's on the table. He sits down on the bench beside Finn, leaning over to push a kiss against the junction of his neck and shoulder, right above his collar.

"Normally," Poe continues. "You take a break when you're eating. Nobody'll hold it against you."

"It's not that," Finn says, looking up from his paperwork into Poe's bright-and-eager expression. It's still a surprise to Finn that Poe's glad to see him every time they see each other. He's unused to having another person echo his enthusiasm. Now he has two. _And a droid,_ Finn thinks, as BB-8 rolls up to his other side with a greeting.

"Alright," Poe says, smiling. "So what is it that red sauce adds to your requisition grants?"

"Mostly a savory aroma," Finn says, frowning at the red smear Poe is indicating on the top paper.

Poe tips his head, making an allowance that Finn is correct.

"Really, it's not the food," Finn says. "I just like having the background noise."

Poe looks around. The mess hall is packed with pilots and infantry officers and all their conversations in a whole variety of languages, from all across the galaxy.

"Yeah," Poe says, taking it all in, then looking back at Finn. "It's kinda nice, isn't it?"

This surprises Finn, the way that echoes surprise him more and more the longer he's away from the First Order.

"You like it too?" he asks - he doubts Poe's reason is exactly like his own.

"Sure," Poe says. He works his fork through his own food, mixing all the different parts together into one bite on his fork. His next words come around the mouthful as Poe chews. "No matter how bad your day was, no matter the results of the latest battle or the newest bad news..."

Poe swallows, "here, everyone still relaxes. There's something about eating together that makes you family."

Finn would never have thought about it that way, but he knows Poe's right. He likes to see them laughing, in good spirits.

"You're right," he says, shoveling the forms back into the folder. He sets his tray on top, getting up. 

"You all done?" Poe asks, looking up at Finn in confusion.

"Nah," Finn says. "Don't you think we should have dinner with our _whole_ family?"

Poe grins, and picks up his own tray to follow Finn.

-

They find Rey sitting outside with her food, up on a ridge behind the base with her eyes on the sunset. The days are long here.

"Hey," she says, without looking up. She waves over her shoulder with a piece of fruit in her hand, and Poe can see the slick line of juice running carelessly down her wrist. 

Poe sits down on one side of her, and Finn on the other. BB-8 has to take the long way up the slope, and he can hear the droid moving over the ground behind them.

"Are we interrupting Jedi Stuff?" Finn asks, curious.

"Master Luke has pretty much made sure that I know how to do Jedi stuff without being interrupted," Rey says.

"Even by two guys as handsome as we are?" Poe asks.

"I went down 300 stairs on my hands," Rey tells them. "Two handsome guys is a pleasant sight but no real distraction."

Poe whistles appreciatively, and Finn looks impressed. Rey looks proud of herself. She flicks back her sleeve and displays a bicep muscle that Poe can only be envious of.

"I could never be a Jedi," Poe says.

"Couldn't do 300 steps on your hands?" Rey asks, grinning.

"Couldn't ignore two beautiful people," Poe corrects, in a bright tone.

Finn laughs. "How do you get any flying done if you're always looking out for cute people?"

"Well, I try to make sure at least one of them is in the seat behind me," Poe says.

"There's only one seat in an X-Wing," Rey says.

Poe knows that, but the first thing that comes to mind is exactly how much you can do with one seat and a good amount of flexibility and determination. It's a good memory, and Poe loses any chance to make a rebuttal to idle fantasy.

"Lots of room in the Falcon," Poe suggests.

Rey and Finn both squint at him.

Poe shrugs - just an observation.

"You weren't there when it started spewing poison gas," Finn says.

"Fixed that," Rey puts in.

"But definitely hard to think of that death trap as a sexy place," Finn adds.

"Death trap?" Rey turns on him. "That's the Millennium Falcon!"

"When we were flying to Starkiller Base to rescue you," Finn tells Rey, reaching for her hands. "Han Solo _glued_ a part back onto the hyperdrive."

Rey looks appalled. "Which part?"

"Would you like a hand with repairs?" Poe offers. "The Falcon meant a lot to the Rebel Alliance, it should mean just as much to the Resistance."


	3. Chapter 3

"So you get to fly again," Finn says, as Poe empties the contents of the under-seat emergency kit out onto his bunk, lining the items up neatly and considering each.

"I get to fly again," Poe agrees, pressing his thumb against his mouth as he thinks. He has a bag of supplies he'd managed to trade for at the last outpost visit. It has to all fit in the metal box that goes under the seat. 

"What are you doing?" Finn asks, peering over Poe's shoulder.

"Improving the survival kit," Poe says. "After Jakku and Autiornac III, I have a finer appreciation for what's in these things."

"Wait, you mean we had survival kits on Jakku?" Finn says, sounding faintly outraged.

"Yeah," Poe says. "Under the seats. It turns out the First Order isn't _completely_ heartless."

Finn groans. He sits down on the edge of Poe's bed suddenly, bouncing the contents of the kit into a disarray. 

"I drank water out of that _thing_ ," Finn says, supremely agonized. "With that _animal_. It tasted like..."

Poe, able to look back on the situation with some humor, just watches Finn's small existential crisis. 

"Where are you saying your mouth has been?" Poe asks, with humor. "I've kissed that mouth."

_And_ , Poe adds mentally, _I'd kiss it again._

Finn laughs. "Doesn't matter now. I'll never forget to look under the seat again."

"Well, I'll be honest," Poe says. "If you made it to the outpost before you died, at least you never had to eat one of these."

He tosses Finn a compact ration bar, hearing it thump against his chest before Finn catches it.

"This doesn't look so bad," Finn says.

"Uh huh," Poe answers, weeding out a few other non-essentials to leave room for instant caf, for a few other treats to make a planetary stay less miserable.

Finn watches, somehow eating the entire dry ration bar with no complaint - though Poe notices Finn quickly reaches for the water glass on Poe's nightstand after finishing, drinking it dry.

Poe has to sit on the box to get it closed again, but it _does_ close.

"Alright," he says. "Now Black One's got real survival power."

"I hope this never matters," Finn says, watching Poe with a little concern.

"Yeah, me too," Poe says. "But - you know how it is. Better to have it and never need it than to need it and not have it."

Poe leans in and kisses Finn on his trough-drinking mouth gently. Finn responds tenderly, reaching up to touch Poe gently under his chin, over his cheek. 

"You better fly safe," Finn says. "Or I'll tell the other pilots to stop talking you up so much."

Poe hoists the gear box. "I wish you would."

"Oh yeah?" Finn teases, following him out of his bunk. He pauses to pick up another discarded ration bar and pocket it for later, giving Poe an honest shrug when he sees he's been caught.

"Yeah," Poe says. He leads the way out to the X-Wings where they sit waiting on the maintenance pads. 

He runs his eyes over the familiar shapes of the T-70's, waiting crouched like attentive birds, overseeing the way technicians and pilots come and go in various states of hurry.

Then an unfamiliar shape draws his gaze like a magnet.

Poe stops short, losing his grip on the repacked survival gear box. The duraplast container hits the ground before Finn can catch it, scattering instant caf crystals and prepackaged rations everywhere.

"Is that Red Five?" he asks, eyes trained on the landing field.

"What?" Finn asks, without looking up from re-gathering the dropped supplies. 

"That's Red Five," Poe repeats, overcome with intense awe. He's drawn forward, compelled to put his hands on it. He leaves Finn behind to gather up dropped items, forgetting everything but a desire to touch the legend sitting in front of him.

It's like he's a kid again, compelled to climb into the cockpit of his mother's old A-Wing and touch all the controls.

"What's a Red Five?" Finn calls after him, but Poe's not sure he has words to explain just now, with his fingertips brushing against a piece of real, triumphant history.

-

Rey spends a lot of time avoiding the busiest parts of the base before she realizes what she's doing. On Jakku, she'd never shied away from the relative bustle and abrasive company of Niima Outpost, but that was tempered by long, bracing stretches in the sands. By returning to her home out at the edge of the salvage fields.

This wasn't like that. She enjoys company, she likes people, likes companions and friends. She loves - Rey thinks she can admit that much to herself - Finn and Poe. But it's all _so much_ sometimes. Constant. Even her room is shared.

Granted, as much by plants these days as her friends. She likes to bring them back now that water is freely available to her to keep them alive. 

It's just too much sometimes. Especially now when the Force sings in her ears, reaching out to connect her to everything.

She spends some time getting away when she can. A reset.

Unfortunately - or fortunately, in some cases - her connection makes her easier to find.

It means, too, that when Luke joins her in the cockpit of the Falcon - her best hiding spot - that it doesn't surprise her.

They have a connection.

"What a hunk of junk," Luke says, sounding fond. He's looking up at some of the overhead controls, eyes moving slowly over the panel and landing on the dangling wires where Rey had yanked the compression switch out of the wall.

"She's saved my life a few times, this 'hunk of junk'," Rey says.

Luke looks over at her, slowly rotating his head against the back of the seat to smile at her through his beard.

"Mine too," he admits.

"Besides," Rey says. "You have a hunk of junk of your own on the runway down there."

"Red Five?" Luke asks. "I didn't even know Leia kept it. Sure is good to see it again though."

"Poe just about lost his mind down there," Rey says. "You can bet he's going to want to fly it."

"Poe?" Luke asks, in a strange tone.

"Commander Dameron," Rey reminds.

"I knew his mother," Luke says. "And his father, though _he_ never almost shot me out of the sky."

"What?" Rey asks, laughing. There's got to be a story there - really there are so _many_ stories behind all these legends of the universe.

"Well," Luke says. "That's a long story, and I actually came about the future."

Rey looks up at all the scars of the past written on the console of the old freighter and thinks that the quiet of isolation may soon return to her. 

 

-

Rey reaches out to him first because Poe needs her to. He cannot stop being aware of the distance of years between them. She isn't lesser, just younger. Poe wants to be sure she's only getting what she wants, that his attention doesn't become a pressure. He should know better than to stick to such old notions of dry courtesy around _Rey_ \- she's a confident survivor.

He does it anyway. Poe has always had trouble making things easy for himself.

"Poe," she says, one day when he's helping her finalize the latest round of repairs on the _Falcon_ (the actual _Falcon_!, Poe thinks with his hands in the ship's guts and a giddy thrill).

She continues when she's knows he's listening. "What would I do if I wanted things to move faster?"

The question confuses him. "Are you having trouble with the hyperdrive?"

Rey looks at him as if Poe is too dense to breathe oxygen, as if he's said something she doesn't believe. Poe puts down the damaged junction that he's in the process of replacing, knowing that same look from conversations with General Organa. He waits, knowing that any further guessing without more context clues will get him in trouble. 

Rey takes a deep breath and looks him in the eyes like a Gallian cobra, holding him captive. "What would I do if I wanted things to move faster between _us_."

"Oh," Poe says, following her lead out of his thoughts about the near-tragic jumble of the ship's patched and repatched interior workings.

" _Oh_ ," he repeats then, embarrassed as she nods encouragingly at him. "Well. How fast do you want?"

She considers. There's a streak of grease on her cheek that makes her look rugged. Rough. Halfway between adorable and savagely beautiful. Then, she lunges across the open panel, trusting Poe to catch her. It's deliberate. Pointed. She gets her hands in the lapels of his coverall and pulls, kissing him fiercely while he struggles not to overbalance and fall down into the subdeck.

For all that Poe's a good leader, he's not a 'take the lead' sort of guy. On the other hand, Rey seems to know - or to quickly be discovering as their tongues slide together - what she wants. He's content to let her take it. He leans back, she leans forward, and they're still balanced precariously over the square hole of the hatch, but Poe gets his arms around her shoulders without breaking the kiss and gives her the upper hand.

She swings a leg over his hips and she's both heavier and lighter than he anticipates. Maybe 'heavier' isn't the word, he debates with himself as her teeth scrape just teasingly over his lower lip. Maybe it's 'solid' or 'unbreakable'.

He's panting, hot through and sweating in his coveralls when she looks at him, a wicked and measuring gleam in her eye and her hands still tangled in the fabric.

" _That_ fast, huh?" he asks, swallowing a taste of them together and managing a grin that doesn't wholly betray how _hard_ he is already. She knows. She's sitting on him.

Rey's eyes are glassy-bright and deeply triumphant. She's breathing hard too, but it looks good on her. Not desperate, but more like she just came from a training session with Luke. Poe puts that comparison away quickly. 

"Is that alright, Dameron?" she says, playful and commanding in one breath and if Poe wasn't already sitting he'd have to sit down.

"Yeah," he gasps, finding the presence of mind to lean back and brace himself on his hands. "That's really good."

She looks at him, _into_ him, without the intrusive touch of Kylo Ren.

"So what were you waiting for?" Rey demands, understanding a lot but not everything. Not why someone wouldn't make a claim on something they wanted as soon as they knew they wanted it. She's resource-wary. A scavenger still, unable to resist a surplus to save up for a scarcity.

And scarcity is surely coming. The war's not over.

"I was waiting for you to make the first move," Poe tells her, truthfully.

"Why?"

"I needed you to," he says. "I'm a lot older and-"

She wrinkles her nose at this, at convention and wisdom that tries to take precedence over practicality.

"You don't _act_ older," she says. Then, she takes a sting at his pride. "I can fly more ships than you."

Poe laughs. He allows, "simulated ships." 

"I've found that it translates just fine."

"Sure," Poe says. "Until the motivator blows in this old relic and you have to pull half the ship apart in game of 'find the kludge'-"

She kisses him again and wins the argument. He doesn't mind at all.


	4. Chapter 4

Finn can almost immediately sense the change; Rey and Poe come into their shared quarters almost glowing, and he knows those signs of a blush on Poe, the victorious look on Rey's features. They're both smiling and his own answers like a reflex, like a defense - they barely pause after coming in the door before Finn finds himself first swept up by Poe, then Rey working her way between them like a small, determined creature building a burrow.

"So what did I miss?" Finn asks, thrilled by their closeness and touch. There's an energy coming off of them that he can feel, radiant like the sun. It's warm and sweet, and he puts his arm around Poe's shoulders, and by extension, Rey. 

"We came to an understanding," Rey says, her voice muffled against Finn's chest. 

"I don't know if I like the sound of that," Finn teases. Rey pushes him back a step, then Poe seems to pick up the hint and adds his weight to her pressure. "I mean when you both plot apart it's bad enough, but when you plot together..."

He doesn't finish the sentence, because the backs of his knees hit the bunk - the quarters aren't very large, and they only usually spend a short amount of time here. When they wanted to be private and alone, mostly. Finn thinks he's going to want to be private and alone with both of them for the next little while so he's glad they chose to ambush him here, rather than frog-marching him and his forming hard-on back from his office.

"I think you'll like this one, buddy," Poe says.

"I already do," Finn agrees. "But if you wanted to like, detail the whole thing for me..."

Rey grabs hold of the front of his shirt, going up on tiptoes - she doesn't really have to - and pulling their mouths together into a kiss, and Poe leans back a little to let her do it. Maybe it's not perfectly co-ordinated yet, but they seem less hesitant around each other; less awkward. Finn's glad - they complement well.

Even if he's going to lose his mind with both of them working together like this.

"Well we figured we'd come back here," Poe says, stepping back, bending over to pull his shoes off and nearly losing his balance as he tries to keep watching Rey and Finn kiss. "And make you an intimate part of our new arrangement."

Finn can't answer him, but he likes the sound of that. 

"Besides." Poe drops his first boot onto the floor, follows it with the second in a gentle arch where they'll be mostly out of the way in case any of them have to stumble to the bathroom later. "Negotiations of this, uh, magnitude, require all parties to be present."

He glances back at Finn again - finds him still occupied. Finn lets the words flow past him, distracted by the point of Rey's tongue darting fiercely past his lips, pressing briefly against his own in a moment that seems to charge all the way down his spine and nearly takes him off his feet. He's glad the bed's behind him.

Rey's hands work the zipper of Finn's uniform - just his working one; his dress uniform is safely kept in the closet away from the potential messes that three people living in such proximity and involvement could create. She pushes the jacket off over his shoulders and he has to take his hands off her hips to let her do it. She's strong and compact in his arms, and there's nothing soft on her at all, and Finn loves it. Even the roughness of the fabric over her back, when he reaches up to tug off the outermost layer of her tunics - she wore several against the cold of space. 

"Anyway," Poe says, pulling off his coveralls, still talking somehow to fill the space around sighing and breathing and kissing. "It takes three to do the Toydarian tango."

Rey pulls back from Finn's mouth, baring her teeth, playful. 

"Are you ready?" she asks Finn, more serious than Poe, who is still rambling as he pulls off his socks - and Finn only now, without the distraction, recognizes it as a nervous habit.

"Yes," Finn says, feeling his skin go flushed and hot, even in the cool air of their quarters. He trails his hands over the curve of Rey's spine, then up along her sides, just against the curve of her breasts under their bindings.

"Are you sure?" he asks. 

She bites her lip, as if holding back a laugh, and nods. Then, promptly, she shoves him over onto the bed where Poe has just seated himself. His stream of chatter dissolves into a grunt of impact, and in the moment where they have to sort knees and elbows, Rey drops herself in the middle, artfully making sure they're all touching each other before anyone's nerves can get in the way.

Finn, in that moment, knows he loves her for good. 

-

"Can I kiss you?" Poe asks, feeling better. Feeling like he needs it. 

Finn looks at him, not uncertain but as if he can't believe it. He claps his big, broad hands on Poe's shoulders, almost rattling him, and Poe feels like he's been made more solid. Rendered real by the contact. Then Finn pulls them together, mouths aligned, gently kissing Poe. Closed mouth and chaste, slow and sweet, pulling at Poe until they are chest to chest, one easy line of contact even though Finn's just a little taller than Poe. Enough that he has to crane his neck to get into place.

It feels like a surrender, and Poe doesn't mind. Welcomes it, in fact, lifting his arms around Finn's neck to encourage him to take matters further. He does - and if he's new at this, Poe would never have guessed. 

Poe can feel Rey pressed against Finn's back, feel the electric way his nerves are reminding him that there's more than one person here. Finn's palms ease over Poe's shoulders, and her smaller fingers pluck at Poe's undershirt, which already feels like a measly barrier - Finn's still wearing pants, Rey's only got her shoes and outer tunic off, and that leaves Poe feeling exposed in his boxers - which hide absolutely nothing of his growing and unwavering erection except perhaps the color of his skin. It's silly to be embarrassed - in the past he never would have been, but something here seems to matter more. 

Then Finn pushes him over onto his back, and Rey shoves the edge of the undershirt up his chest, leaning over Finn's shoulder, muttering something into Finn's ear that makes Finn's eyes go glassy and dark, and both of them together are perfect and beautiful. Poe likes the contrast they make together, skin on skin. He likes Finn's short hair, and Rey's long hair which she never let down.

He likes feeling like the piece in the middle, as Rey's nails trace lightly over his nipples until they're hard and it almost hurts - until his breath catches in, and Finn's hand traces over the inside of Poe's thighs, against the back of his knees almost idly. They've touched each other in probably almost all of these places before, but there's a different intent here, a new, intoxicating charge that leaves Poe breathless and straining, shifting, reaching. He turns halfway over, to sling his leg over Finn's hips, to press them closer together as he sighs softly into Finn's skin, breathing warm air against his chest. 

He can do this - he can _really_ do this, if the way his body feels almost like it's glowing every time Rey's nails lightly scratch a line over his back, or dip down over his tailbone and press, is any indication.

He's supposed to be the experienced one here, isn't he? Poe huffs out a laugh. "You guys wanna give me a minute to prove I have any skills at all?" 

It comes out breathy and begging, as Poe grinds his hips against Finn's, firmly enough to feel the fabric of Finn's pants through his own flimsy boxers. 

"Do we want to do that?" Finn asks, and it takes Poe a minute to realize he's probably talking to Rey, even as she slips her hand under the waist of his underwear and traces the curve of Poe's ass. 

Rey makes a playful noise, like she's considering, and Poe opens his eyes to see her broad, wicked smile. Poe leans up to kiss her again, to press his lips against her teeth, wrapping himself around Finn to do it, feeling the way Finn swallows and the way his breath catches when that happens practically right on top of his nose. Poe kisses her until her fingers thread into his hair, and then pulls back again, only letting his eyes open a little.

"Please?" he says, winningly.

Rey's other hand yanks his boxers over his hips, dragging the waistband over his cock until it bounces free, and it's probably the only answer he's going to get. 

"I think we should let him," Finn huffs out belatedly, breathless. 

It takes some doing, but between Finn and Poe, they untangle Rey gently from her clothes, and she lays back imperiously and enjoys it as each new layer unwinds, each new bare patch of skin is something to press their mouths against. Poe thinks, even though it's been all this time, she still carries the scent of Jakku when her skin gets warm; sand and sun and scouring. On her, it's not bad at all. Poe finds himself seeking it more deeply, tasting the salt in the inner bend of her elbow, and hearing her sigh out, feeling the way her body shifts and twists back and forth between them. Finn claims her mouth, so Poe moves down, kissing a line along her belly, over the slight outlines of her ribs beneath the strong muscle, over the softer skin of her side where he can feel the way her body tenses and shifts at the ticklish brush of his loosened hair.

It's not her hand but Finn's that reaches down to push him further, easing Poe down the bed while he covers territory he has not yet tasted, leaning over Rey from the opposite side that Poe does. He holds his hand over the back of Poe's scalp, guiding, until Poe settles between her thighs, and she throws one knee over his shoulder, pressing her heel against his back until he touches her with his tongue, and then finally her breaths break for noise. 

Her slim fingers dip beneath his chin to hold herself open for him, and Poe takes his permission where it's granted, drags the flat of his tongue over the folds of her in broad strokes, and he knows Finn is touching her too, he can feel the drag of their bodies together, hears the way the sweet sounds she makes sometimes disappear into Finn's mouth. Poe shifts - even though she kicks him a little with her heel in clear warning to _not_ stop what he's doing, looking up to see her - just the point of her chin over Finn's shoulder, the squeeze of her eyes as she rocks her body up beneath both of theirs, as Finn works his mouth over one of her nipples, or pushes his lips up against her ear, mouthing the lobe. 

They're a gorgeous tangle, and Poe thinks he's not going to deny himself this when he's the only holdout here. Then Rey kicks him again, and he lowers his mouth, hard enough to rub his own hips down against the blankets and mattress as he licks her wet, dripping, slick, and thinks that down here there's no sign of the desert at all.

Rey surges up beneath them as Poe makes the best use of the tip of his tongue against her clit, and he feels her wind and wind, hears her breath catch in and hold and then Finn's hand slides against his cheek, all three of them touching her, Finn easing his fingers into her and pressing her open until she's gasping with it, until Poe can feel the tide of it push through her and taste the way she's clenching around Finn as he licks her there, too.

When he sits up, back, he's a mess. Rey's leg slides bonelessly over his shoulder and thumps to the mattress, and she and Finn are a mess too. Finn is smiling at him; beautiful, even as his fingers still gently, lazily, work inside Rey.

Poe wipes his face on the back of his arm, and leans back, catching his breath. 

Rey looks very far away.

"Okay?" Poe asks, teasing gently, watching sense come back into her eyes rapidly. He knows it was more than okay, but he can't help himself.

"Finn," Rey says, softly. "Hold our boyfriend down for me, please."

-

"Okay," Poe is saying; repeating, like a mantra. Rey doesn't think it's as good as 'please' from him; but they can take this in steps. Permission is close to begging, she well knows. 

In this case, it seems to be equal parts awed realization that this is going in a direction Poe never expected it to, and that he's _really alright with that._

She doesn't look up at him, just feels the tension in his body wind up as she mouths her way down his hard, arching cock and sucks to one side of the base of it. She's taking her time with this, fully content to wait for Poe to lose his mind, even as she slides her tongue against his balls and hears his voice pitch up an octave in surprise.

"Oh-kay," Poe gasps. Rey doesn't think he even realizes he's saying anything; giving her clear encouragement and even clearer indication that he needs a minute to get used to something.

Rey stays where she is with long, wet, lazy passes of her tongue for just long enough that Poe pulls in a breath to sigh it out in hitching gasps. She shifts a little further down, pushing his leg up with her hand behind the knee.

There's a small expanse of skin just behind his balls and when she puts her mouth there, an idle press of her lips, a flick of her tongue in what's intended to be a passing gesture, she gets more response than she expected; a low, belly deep groan tears wordless out of Poe and she hesitates, feeling like she's just unlocked a secret. 

She does it again, and this time Poe sighs out a sweet, helpless sound tailing his breath and she reaches up tentatively with the Force, brushing against what Poe's feeling just to be sure she isn't pushing a boundary. Feeling for readiness without letting up contact - maybe the Force wasn't _really_ intended to be used as a tool for consent, but she tries it anyway.

And, Rey thinks, she can taste his desire for more pressure, for her to press just there until he yields, so she abandons the light, exploring touch and _pushes_ with her tongue, tracing hard against his perineum until she reaches just _there_ and it's different - _way_ different than she expected when she can hear his loud, breaking voice and feel the complex mixture of his emotions. Worry, pleasure, surprise, _pleasure_ \- washing over her.

She gets caught up, forgetting to experiment, forgetting any hygiene related reserve, and returns him the favor of a slow, thorough, borderline rough licking open and _then_ he begs.

"-please, Finn, buddy, kriff, Rey, _please_ -" unable to articulate further. Finn apparently gets the meaning, reaching down Poe's body to curl around his leaking cock and by the time he's arching and wordless and cumming, _Rey's_ got an ache and heat low in her belly again and she wonders if the three of them together will always wind up in this loop.

She's almost sore when Finn reaches for her again, and when his rough fingers work over her clit, she grinds herself against them for deep friction, trapping his hand against Poe's thigh even as he recovers, bleary-eyed. It doesn't take long at all.

"Wow," Poe manages, a little later, and it drags Rey up from her drifting sea in an irritating way, making her feel sharp at the edges.

"That's all you have to say?" Finn asks, in a satisfied sort of way.

"Uh," Poe tries again, shifting, curling one arm around Rey and pushing his back against Finn for security "Wow, can we try that again sometime. Maybe, like a lot of times?"

She knows it wasn't quite what any of them expected, and for Rey, that's a deeply satisfactory outcome.

"Yeah," Finn says, agreeing with the sentiment. "But maybe like-"

"After we sleep," Rey says, refusing to let anything stop the comfortable way she's fading into dreams.


	5. Chapter 5

The new base is noisy. Crowded. It seems like no matter where Rey goes, she can't find any quiet. Either there's a drill - or repairs - or someone wants her attention or needs... _something_.

The serenity she'd learned with Luke at his island paradise on his green and isolated world is hard to hold onto here.

But, the world they've chosen is green and gentle, and every so often Rey can sneak away to spend time with no sounds but bird song and her own beating heart.

She always keeps the lightsaber balanced in her lap. Alone is still vulnerable, but she's good at getting out of difficult spots. Besides, if she's very quiet, the past whispers out of it and the confusing tendrils are slowly, slowly weaving a picture that Rey can see. There has to be something about it that made Kylo Ren want it so badly.

Something other than the way his own lightsaber seemed on the shaking verge of collapse. He could build another one, if his blade dissatisfied him. Rey suspects - no, she knows this was Luke's blade. Before him, there's a period of darkness.

She's feeling her way through. But things keep intruding - calling out through the Force for her attention. Finn is healed - she'd been immensely relieved to find him well, to see him arrive with the Sullustan pilot that Luke seemed to know.

Poe is healed, too. She's glad to know him. Glad to know Finn, but the pair of them together are distracting. Not so much their frequent displays of affection for each other - and her. Not distracting in the way she's read about in the old, Empire-sanctioned 'productive entertainment' novels she had sometimes recovered in the hulking wrecks of the ship graveyard on Jakku. (She'd read these with a mix of guilty pleasure for the distraction and extreme reservation for the way all of the content seemed stringently screened for only the sort of message the Empire would approve of.)

More distracting because it's impossible not to be aware of other living creatures in her space. Lately, her thoughts reach out and try to connect to theirs when they're nearby. It's like an undercurrent of conversation - subconsciously, you try to listen.

Rey realizes she's sitting in the middle of the woods, thinking about her boyfriends - distracting. She opens her eyes and gives up on meditating. Clipping the lightsaber to her belt, she gets up, dusting off her robes.

She looks up at the sky through the thick cover of leaves, and then her eyes fall on a colony of plants growing down the side of a half-fallen tree. They have long, graceful fronds, and from each a number of smaller, searching seedlings descend. Rey looks at these small hand-like shapes reaching down for new homes, and finds herself charmed.

She cuts the lowest hanging one from it's umbilical root, looking more closely at the miniaturized version of the plant above. It has cream-and-green striated leaves, arranged in a spiky mass over a tiny set of roots.

It would take up living wherever it landed, like the parent plant had before it. Rey finds it endearing, and so she brings it home. Finn and Poe won't mind - though her tiny indoor garden that crowds around their window grows by the day.

Maybe she's their distraction, she thinks, and she decides she likes that thought as she carries the sprout back in her gentle palm.

-

"Hey, Rey," one of the pilots calls as she emerges past the perimeter fence and onto the runway. 

She draws up, looking back at the pilot - Jess Pava, she reminds herself. Rey is getting better at names, even though every day seems like she gets ten new ones to learn.

"The General is looking for you," Jess tells her. "Skywalker was with her."

Rey isn't surprised. It seemed almost to amuse Luke, the way that Leia has refused to let him out of her sight since he'd returned from his time as a legend. Maybe Leia' s worried that he'll vanish again when she takes her eyes off him, like he was never here at all.

"Alright," Rey says. "Thanks, Jess."

Jess smiles at her, and Rey wonders what she must really think of Jedi. Reactions in the Resistance seem to be mixed. Maybe Rey wouldn't believe it herself if she couldn't feel it singing in her veins again after all those years of silence.

She finds both the General and Luke by the looming presence of the gold-colored protocol droid, C-3P0, who can only rarely be coaxed away from Leia's side. He'd make a good target in any room, so she always looks for the droid, first.

She sets her course through the busy command center, chatter all around her, moving bodies, small spaces between big, hastily erected consoles. The floor is a minefield of cables that she steps over. It helps if she makes a game of it, weaving through the pattern of life and obstacles like one of Luke's challenging courses.

Angry droid buzzing stops her, and Rey pulls up short of tripping over R2-D2, the sneakiest astromech droid she's ever met. R2-D2 beeps a rudely worded query that makes Rey smile.

"I've been summoned by the General," she informs the droid.

R2-D2 beeps a response, wheeling back a few inches as it corrects her.

"Does she know you call her that?" Rey asks. R2-D2's language doesn't shock her anymore, she's gotten to know the droid too well for his uniquely sour personality to get to her.

Her answer is a whir and a whistle, before she passes the erstwhile guard-droid. Likely, the droid just didn't want to be ignored. Funny, when R2-D2 had spent years under a blanket, getting shipped from base to base in low power mode.

"I'll see you later," she promises.

Luke notices her first, looking up over Leia's shoulder where they stand in relative isolation behind the currently unused ops table. He looks right at her and in the instant before he smiles, she sees how grave he looks.

Something's coming, she realizes. Instinctively, she reaches out into the force for it, for the warning ripples of something big. It's been months since the destruction of Starkiller Base. Both sides needed the chance to recover.

"Rey," Leia's voice pulls her back. She turns around and reaches out with both her hands, taking both of Rey's in her warm, paper-dry palms. Rey feels affection and urgency in her grip. 

"Thank you for coming," she says, looking up into Rey's eyes like she does when she's about to ask for something difficult.

"Of course," Rey says. "What is it, General?"

-

"I need you to water it every day for a little while," she tells Poe.

He looks at the tiny plant with some hesitation. Then back up at Rey.

"Uh," he says, making a faint motion with his hands like he's unsure what to do with them. "You know I quit farming, right?"

"It's not that complicated," Rey assures, watching his gaze stray over the other plants in the room.

"You can't hold it against me if they don't all make it," Poe says.

"You said you grew up on a farm," she laughs. "It's not that bad."

"We had automatic waterers," Poe explains, pantomiming something that Rey guesses is supposed to represent an automatic waterer. "Dad said I was really good at showing which crops were really durable."

Rey looks him over, top-to-bottom. Poe jams his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels with an endearing and sheepish smile. She can see why he's a pilot, why he feels the need to embrace his one skill as if it's his own worth in that gesture. It's a charming sort of modesty.

She puts her newest addition down on the window sill where it will get plenty of light. Then she curls her hands into the orange lapels of Poe's flight suit and pulls him forward a half step, looking him straight in the eyes before she kisses him.

He's grinning when she leans back and says, firmly, "water my plants, Poe Dameron."

-

The fully repaired Millennium Falcon wakes up too quickly, responds too enthusiastically. Rey has to get used to the way it feels now, though she knows it should be a relief. It does feel like home to be back in the shabby pilot's seat. She thinks there must still be some of Jakku's pervasive dust in the creases of the cushions.

"Wow," Finn says, standing in the hallway with his hand up on the cushioned arc behind the cockpit to brace himself. "You said you fixed it, but I have to admit..."

She grins at him over her shoulder, as Chewbacca chuffs a faintly irritated rebuttal of Finn's disbelief.

"Well, you weren't here the first time we took off," Finn tells him.

Chewbacca answers briefly, and Rey laughs.

"What?" Finn asks. His Shyriiwook is abysmal.

"He says that the right copilot makes all the difference," Rey summarizes. She begins to enter the navigational coordinates, readying the Falcon for its first trip into hyperspace since the repairs. If anything's wrong, it will show itself now.

"I'm not arguing that," Finn says. He looks around the big cockpit - it seems less crowded without the exposed and dangling wires and crooked panels. "I'm just glad that nothing is going to start leaking poison gas, this time."

"Well, just in case," Rey says, putting both hands on the yoke before the jump. "Hold your breath."

She does, as the hyperdrive comes alive, taking them into a lane with a perceptible, powerful lunge. It's like rolling over a raised dune on her speeder: the ship noses up, increases power, then snaps forward, evening out. They're in. She hears Finn exhale.

_It's like Han said,_ she thinks, with a pang of sadness. _They don't make them like they used to._

"Now, there's nothing to do but wait," Rey says, clicking on the autopilot settings, adjusting the system alarm so it will alert them to any troubles.

"You think it's really him?" Finn asks, as she pushes her chair back from the console. She knows that Chewbacca has both more enthusiasm for watching the controls and more patience in these long stretches.

"Well," Rey says, "it wouldn't be the first war hero we've met."

Finn has to concede that point.

"Yeah, but I hear he blew up the second Death Star," Finn says, sounding a little star-struck.

Rey looks at him, and wonders again how his good heart survived in the First Order.

"You met his co-pilot for that run, you know," she reminds him.

"Oh man," Finn says. He doesn't quite pale, but he does look a little embarrassed. "Yeah I found that out after - Poe told me. I wanted to bury my head in the dirt. I asked so many stupid questions."

Rey laughs. She reaches up and pats Finn on the shoulder as she heads into the modified living quarters of the Falcon, with half a mind to go and look at the hyperdrive, just to make sure all the readouts she had at the console are correct. It's hard to chase away the image of it bursting into flames at a faulty juncture when she and Poe had fired it up the first time after a round of repairs. ('I think we found the glue,' he'd said.)

"Did you ask him about the Radar dish?" she says, feeling playful. It's a good feeling to be on her own, in the action again. To have momentum.

"No," Finn says. "I will next time."

"Don't tell him it was practically held on with tape," she says, brushing her hand over the game table.

"What?" Finn asks.

"Play a round with me," Rey says, sitting down.

Finn settles across from her as she boots the game up, clearing out the old in-progress match to start fresh.

"I don't know how," he says.

"Me either," Rey assures him. "We'll figure it out together. It's a long trip."


	6. Chapter 6

Poe frets about the smallest plant. The bigger ones he probably can't kill in the time it will take Rey and Finn to get back, but he can't help thinking of the newest acquisition as some sort of baby.

Like if he leaves it alone for too long, it will tank-out. He'll come back to find the thing has an empty belly and a full diaper.

Which is _ridiculous_ , it's a plant, but he can't shake the feeling.

"Beebee-Ate," he says, after completing his first round of watering Rey's not-so-small pot garden. He displays the small mess of leaves for his droid. "Can you identify this?"

The droid fixes a clinical lense on the tiny plant before beeping a simple answer.

Poe supposes he set himself up for that. "I know it's a plant, buddy, can you tell me what kind?"

BB-8 beeps a negative, then rocks back and looks up at Poe with a query in binary.

"Rey asked me to look after it," Poe explains.

BB-8 responds.

"Yeah, I know I killed that houseplant Snap gave me," Poe says.

BB-8 continues.

"I know the last time I met a plant it tried to eat me, I remember that," Poe says, exasperated. "But Rey says it's not like that. It's an easy plant."

_I just don't want to kill it,_ he thinks. It's important to Rey. While Poe might be able to replace it with another of the same plant, he's pretty sure she'd _know_. There's that Force thing, after all. The plant would have a different resonance or something.

"Maybe I can ask General Organa," Poe muses aloud, looking at his tiny nemesis in its miniature pot. At least it hasn't turned brown yet.

BB-8 chirps a suggestion.

"Ah yeah," Poe says. "That's a good idea, buddy, thank you."

It'll take a little doing to arrange it, but Poe thinks he can make it happen. 

Besides, he owes Kes a report on his latest crash landing, and he hopes word hasn't reached his dad about that yet. It's better to get news like that _after_ you already know things turned out okay.

He hopes Rey and Finn are having an easy time of things on their mission, but Poe has an idea that after going smooth for a while, it's time for things to start getting difficult again.

-

For Poe, that happens sooner than he expects. He's called away for his own mission before he can get a chance to contact Kes. Poe debates lodging the tiny pot somewhere in the back of the cockpit of Black One so he can keep an eye on it, but he decides that the potential for danger is greater there, even if leaving it means he has to trust it to Iolo.

Her other plants are doing fine, at least. Poe's had BB-8 remind him of their watering schedule. The droid does so cheerfully - BB-8 enjoys any chance to deploy the alarm program.

"Hey, Poe," Snap calls, geared up and waiting for the crew to finish fueling and vetting his X-Wing. "I figured I better tell you that Controller Dand is just looking for an excuse today."

"Your weather advisory is duly noted," Poe says, reaching up when Snap does to slap the backs of their hands together, both sweeping away in an old salute. Equal parts greeting and good luck.

"And will be taken into account," Poe finishes, grinning. "Fly cool, Snap."

"I always do," Snap says, in a serene tone that suggests he knows _that's_ a complete fabrication.

Poe fits his helmet onto his head, working the fastener under his chin and making sure his comm speakers are settled against his ears comfortably before he climbs up the ladder and into Black One, feeling complete. 

"Alright, BeeBee-Ate," Poe says. "Tell me how she's feeling today."

BB-8 relays readouts over Poe's HUD, indicating all the information from the sensors, fuel and temperature gauges. His engines are good when he fires them.

"Welcome back, Black Leader," Jess calls over the comm.

"Good to have your eyesore paint job in my sights again," Kare agrees.

"It's custom," Poe protests. "It stands out."

He's met with playful laughter as he follows ground control's instructions to taxi onto the runway.

"See you in the sky, Black Squadron," Poe says, when he gets the all clear for takeoff.

They have word of First Order activity from a rim outpost. It's a threat to supply lines, a threat to lives, and a chance to bloody the First Order's nose in a public way.

The people of the galaxy - formerly New Republic people - need to see it. That the Resistance is still out there fighting for them.

It's hard. Both sides are still recovering, but the Resistance is down good men, down most of their X-Wings, lost half the fleet in taking out the Starkiller Base. Poe knows better than to think that's the only trick up the First Order's well-pressed sleeve.

He just hopes that the slow trickle of new recruits and new resources from the estranged and outraged former New Republic members is enough. He knows what tricks the Resistance has up their sleeves. 

_We're better, we're faster, we're smarter,_ Poe thinks, as he ascends, accelerating into the star-spotted black of space. He can feel the instant his engines aren't fighting gravity and atmosphere anymore. When the need to generate lift is replaced by the need to create thrust instead.

The air under the canopy becomes colder. Space becomes a 3-D concept without fixing points like the ground or sky.

"Alright," Poe says, getting check in readouts from the rest of his squad - still half comprised of Red and Blue Squadrons, because they're low on pilots, low on X-wings. "Talk to me Black Squadron, are we all here? All ready?"

"Black One this is Blue Leader, I am ready."

"Red Leader reporting all normal."

"Blue Three checking in."

"Blue Eight, here."

The rest of his expected squad mates check in, Poe making a mental list as part of his ritual before any mission. He's got to know who he's bringing home again.

"Black Leader," an unexpected voice comes into his ear and Poe doesn't recognizes it immediately. "This is Red Five, checking in."

Poe has to shove down the starstruck feeling that threatens to overwhelm him. He's flying with _Luke Skywalker_ , the man who destroyed the first Death Star, who killed Darth Vader. Hero of the Rebel Alliance and the New Republic.

"Roger, Red Five. If we encounter any Death Stars you are in charge," Poe manages, keeping his tone light before he adds, "it's a pleasure to fly with you, sir."

"You can tell me that _after_ I find out how rusty I am, Black Leader," Luke answers him.

"Acknowledged," Poe says, getting the readout from BB-8 that all astromech droids have received coordinates for their hyperspace jump. "Alright, Black Squadron, let's get in fast, hop out hot, and get home again. We are go."

Space stretches and expands over the canopy as Poe sends the X-Wing into hyperspace, feeling it settle into a lane and accelerate beyond the capability of the mind to understand. 

He takes his hands off the controls and sits back, finding his calm, reaching down into his center and focusing on his own heart-beat because he knows when he comes out of hyperspace, it will be straight into battle.

-

The first time Poe feels the tether of their gravity he is countless light years away from them; flying Deep Rim territory in a contest with two ragged ends - one the Resistance, flying at the most desperate end of their reach to rescue a Republic senator who by the mercy or salvation of good timing was way out here when the New Republic ended.

Their opponents: a starving wing of TIES from an outpost that hasn't seen a resupply since Starkiller Bust, as Snap termed it.

Poe is looking into the sights of a wildly firing enemy fighter, hands blanched on the yoke which is slammed forward with the whole of his body leaning behind it. His mouth is open, sound coming out - all he can rely on to save him is shaking the other pilot. A blind charge with his laser cannons screaming, engine shrieking, and BB-8's warnings shrilling as an undercurrent to the hot electric needles coursing his veins like rapids into a waterfall.

In the instant before the TIE explodes, something yanks at Poe's heart, pulling it around and away in his chest. A lurching, harsh sensation.

It's the first time he's realized that if he doesn't go back, he's leaving someone - two people - behind.

The TIES are here to survive, to steal what they can from this station and their desperation is plain - they fly with recklessness, with intensity. They hold a grudge, give chase in a way Poe's not used to from the First Order.

_Usually,_ he thinks in the thumping spaces between his heartbeats as he throws the X-Wing up and over, trying to break away, _they stay together, stay in formation almost to a fault..._

This is chaos.

"Black Leader, there's two on my backside that I need some help with!" Jess practically shouts as her X-Wing screams by on his left. The two black TIES come a second later, their engines howling in a different pitch.

"I got it, Jess, just keep dodging and weaving," Poe says.

Around them is a cacophony of engine sounds and shrieking laser fire. Underneath this symphony of violence is the sound of his own engines, and his own breath and heartbeat, intermingled with the sounds of his ship and to his mind, indistinguishable.

He vaporizes one of the TIES pursuing Jess and the other peels away, rounding on him. Cutting under Poe's belly faster than he can respond. It's one of those moments of clarity with BB-8 shrilling a warning about target lock in his ears, where danger is so present and so real that his instincts should be the only sound in his mind. He yanks back on the throttle and pulls Black One into a gut-lurching twisting climb.

He hears Rey's voice - ' _mind my plants_ ' - and Finn's - ' _be safe out there, flyboy_ \- and it wakes a pang in Poe, a desire to get through this and get home, safe. To see them again.

At the edge of the atmosphere, he stops the X-Wing's twisting and has a clear view of the blue-green line where space begins. Then he takes Black One over backwards, plunging for the ground.

_I have to get home, nothing else is acceptable._

He shoots past the TIE, shouting the whole way, strafing the cockpit and big solar panels. Then he's past, aware that the rest of the fight is still going on around him.

"He's still on your tail, Poe!" Jess yells into the comm, even as laser blasts streak past his canopy.

Poe pushes the yoke forward and drops straight down, twisting his nose dive into a spin.

He's 100 meters from the ground and it fills the canopy when he's facing it now, relying on instruments and readouts to tell him everything - there's too much for his eyes to _possibly_ process and he's spinning down now, lost in how the X-Wing is oriented. Diving and spinning to keep the TIE bomber from getting a lock, praying the pilot will lose his nerve. 

50 meters, and the spin tightens, the attitude of the closed s-foils at odds with each other. His warning sensors are screaming, BB-8 shrieking that their spin is tightening, that there's the smallest window for recovery that the droid's algorithms can calculate, and his own voice is an undercurrent to it all like a banner torn and streaming in the wind.

40 meters and they're still funneling earthwards, Poe's eyes locked on the instruments, his willpower clamped over his instinct to do the right thing - or to surrender to the deceptions of his inner ear and yank the yoke around enough to kill them faster.

35 - the TIES are fast, brutal, but the solar sails are not true engines. They harness thrust, they don't create it.This deep in atmosphere, that's useless, no good for blasting them away from the hard, unforgiving ground. 

The other pilot _has_ to know that - 30 meters - _has_ to pull up before he over-commits. Has to chicken out.

25 meters. Poe's screaming through his teeth, white knuckled as he points Black One nose down at death, as BB-8 pierces into the primal state of his mind with the information that the TIE has broken away for the love of the _FORCE_ -

Poe yanks back and opens the S-Foils, straightening the angle of attack but Black One is still descending.

15 meters - he throws over the switches for the engines and tries not to yank up so hard he'll stall. Not enough.

10 meters and he's moving forward more than down, but Black One is still dropping and BB-8 shrills at him to eject, to save himself - 8 - _7_ \- 

Poe reaches up and jams on the antigrav landing assistance jets and Black One jounces upwards, rough and hard. Poe's guts sink down somewhere in his boots, but they gain altitude from the bounce and then _keep_ gaining it as the X-Wing starts listening to him again.


	7. Chapter 7

"Well, about that," Lando's face fills the holo-comm, and if Rey didn't know his age she'd never guess it. "It's just a big misunderstanding between me and the Hutts, honestly."

His tone - amicable, good natured, _distracted_ \- does very little to put Rey at ease. Probably because it's _calculated_ to make her relax. Beyond his hologram, she can see the planetary blockade he's stuck behind through the cockpit windows.

"What kind of misunderstanding?" Rey asks, trying not to sound displeased. She knows Finn is right behind her and no one said this was going to be easy.

"Well, you know the Hutts," Lando Calrissian says, making an absent gesture she can't see, his tone evasive. "They think everything is theirs and they won't take no for an answer."

"A planetary blockade?" Finn puts in. "That's pretty extreme for a misunderstanding."

"Well," Lando says, offering a smile that would have been roguish and dashing twenty years ago - maybe even ten. "You must not know the Hutts very well."

Rey takes Finn's hand, gently, where it won't show on the comm.

"General, is there any way you could sneak out of there and meet us past the blockade?" Rey asks, practically.

Lando sits back, revealing more of his image. He doesn't seem to believe in shirt buttons. "I haven't been a General in a long time. "

"We're going to need you to be one again, once we get you out of here," Rey says.

"Well, you get me out of here and you can call me anything you like except Hutt-lover," Lando says.

Rey understands this to mean that Lando Calrissian will not be coming to them. She nods and looks to the blockade beyond him, considering. 

"We'll contact you again, General. Will you remain at your current location?"

"For as long as I can," Lando promises. "I'll keep tabs on what's going on as best as possible. If I see an opening to get to you, I'll take it."

"How?" Finn asks, looking at the array of ships surrounding the planet, doing their best to jam communications. 

"I have my ways," Lando says. "I got in touch with you this time, didn't I?"

Rey has to give him that. They both sign off of the comm, and she looks out at the blockade, wondering how it can be legal to cut off an entire planet for one man.

_The First Order is behind this._

With the New Republic in shambles, the First Order could permit such actions and make fairly solid promises that there'd be no interference from the Galactic Senate. In fact, it was very unlikely that it would even be noticed in all the rest of the chaos.

This is the galaxy that the First Order is striving to build. One running on dictatorship, on favors paid and owed instead of fair and balanced law. More than that, they are bullies, and Rey has always been very good at handling bullies.

"What are we going to do?" Finn asks. "We can't blast our way through - well, maybe if surprise was on our side. Even if we did, we couldn't blast our way out again."

"We could try talking our way in, like Han did," Rey suggests.

Chewbacca protests with a low rumble.

"I know he didn't talk his way out of many situations, but _in_ ," Rey says. "I think we can manage that."

Chewbacca considers, and then nods, once.

"So what's the plan once we're past the blockade - all the guns are pointing _in_ ," Finn asks, the voice of reason as he so often is.

"We'll use the Force," Rey tells him.

Finn makes a face, but then smiles at her. "You know, I have it on good authority that's not how the Force works."

Rey grins at him. He grins back.

"Just let me do all the talking," Rey requests, turning on the comm again to contact the blockade ships. "I have some ideas."

-

Finn has a bad feeling about this. He trusts Rey, he's sure she probably knows what she's doing, but he has never done anything like this before. He's pretty sure she hasn't, either.

But she's also a Jedi now. She has the Force. That's something.

"What's taking them so long?" Finn hisses, trying not to jog his foot under the chair, trying not to _look_ as defensive as he feels to be left alone in a glamorized waiting room.

"Have you ever met a Hutt before?" Rey asks, looking at Finn and wrinkling up her nose at his agitation. She sweeps a hand at him, palm-flat, indicating he should relax. "They're not exactly speedy."

Finn stops his nervous motion, taking his lead from Rey. If she's ready, he can be ready too. He wonders if Poe ever just - fakes it. Probably.

"They're not exactly _friendly_ , either," Finn says. "What are we hoping to do?"

"Simple," Rey says. "Persuade them to give us what we want."

"Oh, _simple_ ," Finn repeats, jogging his foot again. He'd feel better if they hadn't taken his blaster and Rey's lightsaber.

Rey smiles serenely at him, and Finn wonders - very briefly - if anyone even really _likes_ Jedi. He loves her anyway, even when she looks suddenly toward the door before he notices anything at all.

The Hutt heaves into the room on a mechanized walking rig, an elaborately decorated cradle with articulated legs, covered in glittering filigree. It moves with surprising smoothness. Finn almost expects it to list side to side on it's delicate seeming legs under Erdo the Hutt's weight. It's too well co-ordinated for that.

Hypnotic, even. Finn almost doesn't notice the contingent of armed and armored guards that flank the massive, worm-grey body.

Finn's not really sure what to make of it other than - big. It's not exactly pretty - in fact, Erdo's face seems markedly lopsided, as if it's in the process of sliding off - his? - head. Finn thinks he remembers something about Hutts not really being male or female. It's a vague memory - something he learned in his early classes, before he graduated into combat training.

Rey gets to her feet and Finn scrambles to follow her lead, trying not to knock over his chair.

_Why are there so many normal sized chairs on a Hutt ship?_ he wonders.

Rey addresses Erdo and the retinue in Huttese, of course. She has yet to meet a language she doesn't speak. Finn can't follow any of it. 

Erdo seems surprised to hear it from Rey, then makes an expansive gesture with his stubby arms and laughs. It's a deep belly-laugh sound, as if delighted by this development. He waves one flabby hand at a chromed and carefully decorated protocol droid and speaks a proclamation. The Hutt's voice is booming as if it resonates through the whole body.

"My supreme master, Erdo the Hutt, wishes to convey his welcome - and to express that he is comfortable discussing things in common, if that is more comfortable for all present," the protocol droid translates.

Finn guesses that means him, but it's probably also calculated to suggest that Erdo will understand any discussion between them. Rey glances back at him and smiles. Finn nods, but lets her keep the lead.

"We are most grateful for your hospitality," Rey says, keeping her hands together in front of her and her tone polite. 

Erdo makes a minute gesture that still appears laborious, a sizing up of his guests. Rey and Finn have no retinue but each other, no fine clothes to wear - not that Hutts much believed in bothering with that. In the extravagant splendor, they are far from impressive and that small look is all it takes to make them aware of it.

Erdo speaks again, translated by the polite and soothing tones of the protocol droid, though Finn notices the droid does not translate their words back into Huttese.

"What brings the Resistance here?" Erdo asks.

"You have something we want back," Rey says, simply.

Erdo laughs, then speaks.

"My master Erdo enjoys your candid honesty," The droid continues. "But wonders if the Resistance has any legal claim in this situation."

"We're not here to end the blockade," Rey says. "Merely to reclaim the Resistance General, Lando Calrissian."

She makes it sound so reasonable. As if they could all just shake hands and walk away. Finn knows better, but it's a tempting picture, the idea that maybe this won't end in blaster-fire and running. 

Of course, Erdo doesn't see it that way. He just laughs at her audacity. Finn is starting to realize that for Hutts, laughter is a different emotion. It's not joy, but gloating; satisfaction at having manufactured the upper hand. A fat, pink, slobbery tongue protrudes from the Hutt's mouth, wetting his uneven lips. He speaks again, and Finn recognizes Lando's name.

"Master Erdo wishes to inform you that all those involved in the wrongful death of Jabba the Hutt - may he rest wealthfully in the hereafter - are marked for death by the Grand Hutt Council."

The tapering tail of Erdo makes a twitching, wagging gesture as he finishes speaking, an expectant gesture. Finn watches Rey. Maybe she understands what's going on.

"The death mark was called off," Rey says.

A wicked gleam comes into Erdo's eyes.

"Master Erdo would like to remind you that the Hutts have very long memories. In the time it takes your species to grow old and die, their species only matures into adulthood," the protocol droid says. Under its cultured tone, the gravelly stream of Huttese continues.

"With the destruction of Hosnian Prime, several of the members of the Grand Hutt Council were also killed," the droid continues. "As the new majority shifted, the death marks were reinstated for Lando Calrissian, Luke Skywalker, and the Huttslayer, Leia Organa."

Each name on the list hits Finn like a hammer blow - the Hutts practically wanted to do the whole job for the First Order, now that they'd taken out the seat of the New Republic. No wonder the First Order was letting them have their way.

"And do you also call for a death mark against those responsible for the deaths of your council members?" Rey asks.

It actually seems to make Erdo hesitate. He hadn't expected this question - perhaps he expected his statement to stop her cold or terrify her.

_Not my Rey,_ Finn knows. The situation does not feel completely helpless when Finn sees the Hutt hesitate. 

But, she doesn't have the upper hand for long. Erdo gathers himself and begins speaking.

"Master Erdo says he cannot concern himself with death marks other than the ones he has agreed to pursue. Currently, he has taken it upon himself to bring justice and retribution to the killers of Rotta Djarduik's father," the droid says smoothly.

_What?_ Finn still has no idea what's really going on. He does know it's not a great idea to get involved in a blood feud when Hutts are involved.

"Will you or will you not bargain with us for the release of General Calrissian?" Rey says, cutting through all the extra words to reach her point.

"Noah," Erdo says, looking smug and requiring no translation.

"Then," Rey says with a certain authority entering her tone. "You will let us go on our way."

Erdo looks far from convinced. He speaks again.

"Master Erdo says there will be no bargain, but that you will make excellent captives to exchange for the other targets on his list."

Rey goes tense. Finn does too, ready to fight the guards with his bare hands.

"You _will_ let us go," Rey says again, making a flat line gesture with her hand, speaking it as a command.

The guards rush forward even before Rey can finish speaking, and Finn vaults the table without thinking about it. He's here to protect her, not that she needs much of it. If he can keep the guards off of her long enough, maybe she can still Jedi them out of this.

Erdo's brilliant bronze eyes fix on Rey, calculating. He knows she's a Jedi - but her convincing hadn't worked. Finn gets too bogged down in guards to follow what happens next. He sees Rey lift her arm, and then Finn's in a fistfight he's hopelessly outnumbered in.

Punches and long sticks jab for his kidneys, fly in from all directions for his face. His hand-to-hand training kicks in and Finn _thinks_ \- he sees at least three of the heavy-bodied guards hit the floor and wrestles a stick away from one of the others - that he must be doing pretty well, considering the odds are probably a million to one of them getting out of here.

When he gets a chance to look up, Erdo's nowhere to be seen. _How does a Hutt sneak away?_ The entryway is swarming with reinforcements.

"Rey!" He calls out to warn her, but he's lost track of her, too, in the confusion. "Rey?"

In the moment of his distraction, a guard slips in and presses a device against Finn's undefended back. A charge jolts through him and for an instant, he feels the current spasming through his body, locking all his muscles, screaming up his veins and into his _skull_ -

-and then nothing.

-

Poe is relieved to get back to base. It's usually a good feeling but a little bittersweet. Poe loves flying, thrives on surviving danger, on beating the bad guys and beating the odds.

Bastian gives him a solid thump on the back as he passes, leading the group of pilots.

"Catch you for drinks, Commander? We could all use a cool off," he calls.

"No need to catch me, I'm already caught," Poe promises.

"For real this time?" Niv goads, turning around to walk backwards as he passes Poe, still keeping pace with the rest of the pilots. "No blowing us off for better company?"

"'Better Company' is on a mission with 'Best Company', remember?" Jess tells Niv. "Comander'll be there."

"Alright, alright," Poe calls after them - the group is punch drunk and joyous about victory - and they should be. "I gotta check one thing first, then I'll be there."

"Promise?" The group is so far ahead now that Jess practically has to yell.

Instead of yelling his answer across the whole landing strip. Poe puts his thumb to his pointer finger in a universal 'OK' symbol, holding it up over his head. Jess points at her own eyeball, then Poe, then her watch. She'll be waiting. He knows better than to take too long with Blue Four on his ass.

He just wants to check Rey's plants - especially the smallest one - and maybe put himself in the refresher for 10 minutes. Enough to get the worst of the sweat off. 

BB-8 rolls alongside him back to the bunk he shares unofficially with Rey and Finn. Even though he knows it's going to be empty, it feels wrong to find it that way.

Poe had been so desperate to get home, because they were waiting for him that the line had blurred a little in his mind as to where they actually were. He turns the light on, passing his hand over the activation pad and steps into the empty room.

"I made it back," he tells the space and plants. BB-8 queries confusedly behind Poe. The plants wait, crouched and sun-seeking under the window and Poe remembers he wants to call his dad.

The bigger plants all look okay. Poe waters them all, and then looks critically at the one Rey brought to him right before leaving.

_Does it look more yellow today?_ Poe thinks, running his fingers over a skinny, striated frond. He can't remember if it was always this shade of green or not.

"Beebee-Ate," he says, holding the plant out toward the droid. "Does this look okay to you?"

BB-8 looks at the plant, then up at Poe, and warbles an answer.

"Yeah, I mean, it still looks like a plant to me, too, but does it look sick to you?"

BB-8 extends a field-scan over the plant Poe is holding - blue, variegated light raking over it top to bottom. The droid proclaims it free of harmful bacteria.

Poe should know better than to ask BB-8 anything about plants by now. He waters the little thing, thanks his droid anyway, and then climbs into the refresher.

Apparently he takes too long in it, because Jess and Bastian are at his door before Poe is done and they refuse to let him 'keep stalling' for anything more necessary than pants before he is shuffled off to the corner of the hangar reserved for pilot's club.


	8. Chapter 8

Finn wakes up in a cell, certain he's been dreaming of Poe. The details are fuzzy and seem to try and slip out of his grasp even as he reaches for them, but Finn remembers that Poe was - flying, Finn thinks.

Finn's doing that too, maybe. He can feel an engine humming through the floor. His whole body feels stiff and his mouth tastes like copper and discharge. Why is he on the floor?

His memory teases him with details. He remembers a fight - and being outnumbered - and _Rey._ Rey was with him. 

Finn drags himself up off the floor. Parts of him hurt that he didn't know _could_ hurt, and he's fought Kylo Ren and survived a TIE fighter crash. It hurts on the backs of his wrists and between his _toes_ for some reason.

The cell - it's definitely that, bars and everything - is empty except for Finn.

"Rey?" he calls, trying to organize his limbs into something like a sitting position. His back hurts worst of all. It feels tight and drawn, like his scarred muscles have all gotten shorter. _Must've been that thing they zapped me with._

"Rey?" he tries again, peering through the bars. He can't see anything but dim indications of other cages in the darkness beyond his cell.

Rey doesn't answer, and Finn doesn't like that at all. Doesn't want to think that maybe he lost her again. Maybe the Hutts had told the First Order about their captives and they were on the way here now, instead of the Resistance. 

Finn needs some answers. He gets to the bars at the front of the cage and calls for a guard. He can see that there's a whole row of other cells across from his. They are all dark, just like his own, and any occupants that might be in them stay well back from the bars.

Finn tries again, and this time a slurred and quiet voice answers him from the darkness.

"They won't come," it says. The accented common is pitched tightly, well matched to the irritation in the tone. "They're as passed out as I was five minutes ago, lucky _dogs_."

A brown hand appears at the bars of the cell across from Finn. A brown face follows it, revealing itself between the bars. He looks as if he's been here a while, gaunt and bearded in a way that suggests he's been deprived of a razor rather than as fashion.

"Whatever are you yelling for?" the man asks Finn, leaning against the bars. "Don't you know there are people trying to sleep?"

"Sleep?" Finn demands. "How can you sleep?"

"Well," the other person says. "I know there's no bed, but after a while it becomes quite irresistible, I assure you." 

He yawns, a long sound that reaches almost theatrical pitch. "There's damned little else to do, anyway."

"How long have you been down here?" Finn asks, worried. Was it a habit of the Hutts just to leave their prisoners forgotten? Maybe Finn wasn't important enough to try and barter for.

"Long enough that I'm depressingly sober," the man says. "I don't suppose you smuggled in any Corellian Brandy or Ergesh Rum? At this point, I'd lick a cantina _floor_..."

The man, Finn thinks, is older. Maybe around Leia's age. Maybe a little younger. He's not too tall, though it's hard to tell with him all folded up. For all his endless rambling, he's watching Finn with sharp eyes.

"Sorry," Finn says. "I don't have any of that. Not even water."

A dramatic sigh answers this statement. _For someone who says he just wants to sleep, he sure likes the sound of his own voice._

"So what are _you_ in for?" he asks Finn.

"We were trying to negotiate our friend's release," Finn says, carefully. He's not sure how much he should trust strange men in prisons. It's not completely true - Finn wouldn't call Lando Calrissian 'friend' to his face yet.

"You should never negotiate with a Hutt," the man says. "Always threaten them, first. If you're able to back up your threat, then they'll negotiate."

Finn lets out a sigh. "Did they bring anyone else down here with me?"

"Why? Are you missing someone, or are you tired of my company already?"

"My friend Rey was with me," Finn explains, with an anxious pang.

"A girl?" The man asks. Finn nods.

"They said they had a special captive," he reveals. "She's somewhere on this ship. Probably being prettied up to keep Erdo company. Hutts are _so predictable_ about these things."

"What do you mean?" Finn says.

"Don't worry too much," the man placates. "It will be an unpleasant experience, but not a permanently damaging one."

Finn doesn't know what to make of that, or of the other prisoner. He knows he should start planning to get out of here.

"What's your name?" Finn asks.

"Oh, _that_ hasn't mattered in a long time," the man says. "I'm pretty sure it's still Sinjir, though. And yours?"

"I'm Finn."

-

Rey looks at the dress she has been given and then back up at the expectant guard. _Does he - it?- expect to stand there while I change?_

"I'm not wearing this," Rey says. "What have you done with my friend?"

The guard - a strange, fat, greenish creature with a flat nose that reminds her of a Happabore, helped along by the short, blunt tusks protruding from the corners of its mouth - growls an answer in a language she doesn't know. It pushes the dress in her hands toward her chest insistently. 

"No," Rey says, before simply dropping the garment. the guard launches into a series of angry barks and growls, poking a meaty green finger in her face and scolding.

"Where is Finn?" Rey demands. She tries again in Huttese when she gets no response.

The answer she gets is equally unintelligible, but does seem to be an answer to her question.

"Finn," she repeats, reaching out with the Force to try and understand.

The guard picks the dress up off the floor and puts it back in Rey's hands insistently. She picks up his surface thoughts as fear and frustration. Impatience is at the forefront of the guard's simply structured mind. 

_Good,_ Rey thinks. _I'm about out of patience myself._

"I am not going to dress up and you can tell Erdo that if he thinks any differently he'll have a whole new Huttslayer to worry about," Rey threatens.

The guard barks at her again, and Rey crosses her arms over her chest and refuses to touch the dress thrust out at her. Let the guard get into trouble - she doesn't care.

He makes one final attempt, pressing the dress against Rey as if just touching the fine silk fabric will change her mind. It doesn't. 

Eventually, the guard retreats, dress in hands. Rey's left alone in the room she'd been herded into - a sort of combination cell and bedroom that she doesn't like in the least. It's a paradox of soft opulence and security. The only window is in the door, a deep-set pane of glass that sits high up on the metal surface, allowing a guard to look in before he enters.

She knows someone will come to either attempt to force her into compliance or to negotiate, now that she has dug her heels in. Hutts are not patient, accustomed as they are to having their wishes filled instantly.

Her plan is shaky, but beginning to take form. She just hopes Chewbacca is still doing his part.

-

"Do you know a way to get down to the planet?" Finn asks Sinjir, as he waits for Rey or Chewbacca to turn up.

A search of his cell hadn't turned up anything he could work on the bars with. Nothing he could work on the lock with. In fact, there was nothing but a limp mattress on a frame bolted to the floor. Knowing he has no water makes Finn thirsty. His body is sore and tired, aching, but there's a charge in his thoughts that suggests he won't be able to sleep.

"What planet?" Sinjir asks.

"The ship we're in is part of a blockade of a New Republic planet," Finn explains.

"Oh, does that exist again?" Sinjir asks. "I get so little news down here."

"It never really went away," Finn says.

"The First Order blew it up," Sinjir reminds. "That much I know."

"Only parts of it," Finn says, feeling defensive. He'd seen it happen - he remembers the horror of watching the red streak across the sky, of knowing the true power of Starkiller Base and understanding that parts of the galaxy no longer existed. He knows he's arguing semantics, but at least Starkiller was gone now. 

"Enough for real damage," Sinjir says.

Finn, further off topic than he intended to go, sighs. "So I'll take that as a no on any ideas to get through the blockade."

"Don't speak for me," Sinjir says.

Finn waits, wondering if he should have even bothered asking.

"If I wanted to get down to the planet, I would either stow away unseen on one of the blockade ships and wait for them to send a search party down or my target - you do have a target, don't you?" Sinjir asks, as if to make certain Finn is still listening. Finn's not sure if he should confirm his mission or not.

"I will take your silence as discretion, and a very wise decision," Sinjir continues.

"I'm not saying you should stop," Finn says.

"I'd either wait for them to bring the target up to me - all the hard work of tracking and finding is done - or stow away when they were headed down to look for him and let my enemy take me right where I should be," Sinjir finishes.

"What if they wanted to kill him?" Finn asks.

"Well, that changes things a little," Sinjir admits. "Then, I think I'd get a hostage and make demands. Or go back to the original plan of stowing away on their search ships, only with the additional step of disabling the hunting party on the way down."

"How'd you get stuck in here?" Finn asks.

"I'm not," Sinjir says. "I'm just waiting for my opportunity."

"Opportunity?" Finn asks.

"I have a target, too," Sinjir confides. 

Finn wonders if that means he's after Lando also - or if it's something different. He hopes it is. He doesn't really like the way Sinjir says 'target'. 

"Say," Sinjir continues, as if this has just occurred to him. "We could help each other, you and I."

"In case you missed it," Finn says, "Neither of us is in any position to provide any help."

"Hmm," Sinjir says. "I wonder about that."

Fin does too - more, he wonders about Rey. If she's safe, if they've figured out that she's no meek doll. He hopes Poe is okay too. Probably back to flying by now. Finn guesses, as he looks out at the darkness of the hallway around the rows of cells, that going on missions isn't as glamorous as he thought.

Certainly, this was better than the First Order's idea of going on a mission - the death toll was way lower, anyway. It just wasn't very glorious.

Whatever that was supposed to mean. Like those old novels that got passed from Officers to Stormtroopers to Pilots and then back again. The Spy novels, about the brave undercover agent who spent all of his time in nice hotels, seducing enemy agents, drinking fancy cocktails.

_What would agent Terex have done?_ Finn thinks. Well, he'd probably never find himself in a Hutt's personal prison block. _Maybe he'd seduce the Hutt. Can you do that?_

Finn doesn't want to find out.


	9. Chapter 9

Rey's next attendant is not what she expects. A Zabrak joins her, after a soft knock at her door, a polite signal that Rey does not expect. She doesn't carry the dress.

"Erdo sent me to communicate his wishes," she says, in a surprisingly gentle tone.

"He can keep his wishes," Rey says, fed up with the whole charade. "I want to know where Finn is."

"Your friend is also a guest of Erdo," the Zabrak says.

"I want to see him," Rey insists.

"For now, he is safe," the Zabrak assures Rey. "But his supreme regalness, Erdo the Hutt, would like you to know that the continuation of his safety depends on the continuation of your cooperation."

Her tone is serene, as if she ware delivering the weather instead of an ultimatum. Rey detects some undercurrent of sarcasm. 

"I'm not playing this game," Rey says, shoving down her worry for her friend.

"You should," the Zabrak says, showing her teeth in warning. "Erdo is very good at delivering pain. Not so much at being patient with people who disobey him."

"Would _you_ put on the dress?" Rey asks.

The Zabrak smiles, looking Rey in the eyes. "It wouldn't fit me, and I'm too old for that."

Rey finds it difficult to judge her age, physically. When Rey looks into her eyes there's a certain confidence and wisdom that suggests she's not lying. There's also something about her - some undercurrent of danger - that Rey likes.

"But," she continues, "Erdo happens to have _my_ friend hostage, too. So if he had asked me to, yes. I would put on the dress."

"Alright, but how do you know it's not an idle threat?" Rey says.

"I've known enough Hutts," she says. Then, she offers her hand and Rey takes it. "I'm Jas. And you are?"

"Rey. Who's your friend?" Rey asks.

"Did I say 'friend'?" Jas says, with a faint creasing over the bridge of her nose. "Sinjir is more of an old business acquaintance."

"Mine's Finn," Rey says. 

"Well, Rey, if you want to help Finn we have to play this game for a little while," Jas tells her. She pauses, looking Rey meaningfully in the eyes. "We have to help each other."

Rey can't possibly understand the whole of what she means, but she understands enough. They have unexpected allies here - which could mean their mission could still be accomplished, even if Rey had failed to impose her will on Erdo.

Jas leans out of the room, taking the dress from the guard and offering it to Rey like a peace treaty. Rey accepts it this time, understanding it to be her own shackles, as a match to Finn's.

-

Poe is still sleeping off his hangover when the pounding on his door wakes him. It's not the worst he's ever had - his self preservation had kicked in when he'd seen Niv pass out in Bastian's lap, even if the rest of the pilots had seen it as a mark of dedication.

Poe drags himself up, and the pounding comes again before he can even consider making himself presentable.

"Alright," Poe raises his voice, then winces. His head is a slowly throbbing demand for hydration - clear, cold water. His mouth tastes like the dried out remains of a swamp, complete with rats.

He swings the door to his quarters open, expecting Snap or Jess or even Vober Dand, someone from the flight crew.

Instead, it's General Organa's aide herself, wide-eyed and anxiously waiting.

Poe is suddenly conscious of the wreckage of his life at this exact second and he wonders if the universe times emergencies in such a way as to periodically remind Poe that he's not as suave as he thinks he is.

"Commander Dameron," she says, unphased by his appearance. "General Organa is getting a transmission and she thinks you should see it?"

"Right now?" Poe asks.

She nods, looking grave. "Please hurry." 

Poe's stomach makes a strange motion in his middle and he _knows_ suddenly that it's about Rey and Finn. It's just something in his heart attuned to them. 

He goes without further question, with no regard for his appearance or state of dress. She leads him into command central and no one looks twice - all eyes are on General Organa.

"And why should we believe you?" Leia is asking, as Poe fights his way to the front of the crowd.

"There's no need to rely on faith," a distorted voice answers. Remodulated into something deep and metallic. It gives the words an angry quality; a sterile machine growl. "Though a little faith might serve you, princess."

Poe can see Leia's fist clench at her side, but she holds her tongue. The transmission image changes from a masked face - some alien breathing apparatus that carefully covers the rest of the identity of the communicant. The holo-display shows instead Rey, dressed strangely in an outfit Poe doesn't recognize, seated beside the massive figure of a Hutt and surrounded by guards. Poe thinks this must be pre-recorded, spliced in to hide the origins of the transmission.

Leia's face goes hard as steel. Rey, over the holo-comm looks steely and determined. She's clearly a captive but not injured or helpless. Poe doesn't like it - especially not the invasion of her personal agency implied by the wardrobe change.

"General Organa," Rey says, tightly. The feed jumps, just minutely. The figures in it change position just a little. "Commander Finn and I are the guests of the Hutt high council. I must inform you that the death mark against the killers of Jabba the Hutt has been reinstated."

Leia's fist gets tighter still. Poe wants to reach for her, to take her hand and reassure her, but his own hands are clenched tight and he's not sure how much the negotiator can see.

The comm cuts again, back to the expressionless masked face.

Leia is dangerously silent.

"My master wishes to negotiate a trade," the mechanical voice says.

"You tell you master he can stick his death mark up his slimy-"

"Princess Organa," the negotiator interrupts her statement, cutting off her threat. "If you want the safe return of your people, the demands are simple. You must face justice for your crimes. Skywalker and Solo will also pay for their part, one way or another. I will contact you again in two days. Do not make your new subordinates suffer for your previous actions."

The transmission ends.

Leia swears and Poe feels the sentiment echo in his soul. She wheels on him with a stare so intense he has to resist his urge to recoil.

"We're not giving in to those thugs," she growls, and Poe doesn't doubt her ability to rescue Rey and Finn without paying the 'ransom' for an instant.

"What do you need me to do?" he asks.

Leia seems like she's about to start giving orders immediately, but she suddenly stops, blinking, seeming to take in Poe's current condition. 

"Get dressed and bring Snap to my meeting room," she orders. "Make sure you're both wearing shirts."

-

By the end of the second day, Finn's pacing the bars. He wants out - wants to know what's happening. The guards don't seem to speak galactic common; only some grunting language that Finn's never heard. They deliver a tray of grey, lumpy goo that Sinjir tells him is food and a bowl of water that Finn is hesitant to drink, even though he knows what it's like to be truly thirsty.

"It never gets any better," Sinjir says, stirring his grey, unappealing glop with a wooden spoon, letting it plot back down in his tray with a disgusting squelch.

"How do you deal with it?" Finn asks, feeling his stomach turn. He pushes his tray away.

"As little as possible," Sinjir says. "It would go down so much easier with a proper drink."

By now, Finn knows he means alcohol. It seems to be Sinjir's favourite thing to talk about - aside from complaints.

"Before they locked you up in here, were you ever sober?" Finn asks, daring a sip of the water. It tastes chalky and unpleasant, but he's had worse.

"An unfortunate amount," Sinjir says. "I do have to work _sometimes_ you know. So many past sins to account for. So many _new_ sins to accomplish..."

"Where are you from?" Finn asks.

"Ah well," Sinjir says, avoidant. "I'll tell you if you'll tell me. Seems like we have some time to wait, still."

Finn has nothing to hide, really. He's curious if Sinjir will hold up his end of the proposed bargain, or if he doesn't expect Finn to answer.

"I'm from the First Order," Finn says. 

"You what?" Sinjir asks, coughing around his food. He catches his breath, adding, "aren't you on the wrong side of these bars, then?"

"I defected," Finn says, realizing for the first time how _proud_ he is of that. "I ran away. Escaped with a Resistance prisoner."

Sinjir is looking at Finn uncertainly, as if he's half in awe and unsure whether to believe Finn or not. Briefly, Finn remembers Poe - misses him. He's sure if Poe were here now, he'd have some better idea. 

"Well, I'll be," Sinjir says, cutting into Finn's pre-emptive plans to give Poe the biggest hug of his life when he gets out of here. "We could use a little of that escape mojo now, friend."

Finn agrees, but that's beside the point. "Okay, now you."

"Now me what?" Sinjir asks, right on cue. Finn isn't fooled.

"I told you where I was from," Finn reminds him of his own deal. "Now it's your turn."

"Well," Sinjir says. "I'm a runaway too, if you must know. My story's not as glamorous as yours, but-"

"You were in the First Order?" Finn asks, surprised.

"No, I more than learned my lesson the first time," Sinjir says. "I was - a very long time ago now - a member of the Imperial Empire."

Finn understands the accent, then. The well faded military attitude that reminds him of his own past.

"You gave it up?" Finn guesses.

"You could say that," Sinjir says. "I was sure which way the wind was blowing, and I didn't particularly care for my job, even if I was good at it. I took the chance when it came."

There's something in his tone that tells Finn not to ask what his job was. He understands the root of Sinjir's words, the emotion behind them.

"So that's that," Sinjir says, lightly. "I was a Rebel for a while, too. I was talked into it. I don't suppose Wedge Antilles is still with you lot?"

"I'm not sure," Finn says.

"If he has any sense, he's retired," Sinjir says. 

Up the hall, Finn hears the door open. He wonders if the guards are going to come collect his untouched food. He considers stuffing down a few bites just in case it's the last food he sees for a while.

Then a familiar, inquisitive growl resonates through the cell block - and Finn's spirits soar.

He pushes himself against the bars and sees a familiar large, shaggy shape standing in the light at the end of the row of cages.

"Here!" Finn calls. "Chewbacca, we're down here!"

"Chewbacca?" Sinjir asks, as if he doesn't believe it.


	10. Chapter 10

Finn's as surprised as Sinjir seems to be to see Chewbacca sweep the other prisoner up into a massive hug, barking and ululating in a jubilant tone. 

"Yes - yes," Sinjir says, sounding a little strained. "It's good to see you again, too."

"You know each other?" Finn asks, surprised by the intensity of the greeting.

"Didn't I mention that I helped liberate Kashyyyk?" Sinjir says, between hearty and heartfelt thumps on the back. He makes an awkward gesture to return the hug, and steps back quickly when Chewbacca lets him go. 

"No," Finn says, looking to Chewbacca for affirmation. He nods, chuffing agreeably to Sinjir's words. "You didn't mention that."

"Well, you didn't say you were here with Chewbacca, either," Sinjir says, primly. He claps his hands over Chewbacca's furry arms, looking up earnestly at the wookiee. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Chewbacca makes a sad, low-pitched howl by way of response.

"I have no idea what you said," Sinjir says, glancing at Finn, who shrugs - he doesn't know, either. 

Chewbacca looks exasperated, and then beckons them along, back toward the door he'd come in through. Past it, several guards lay unmoving. Finn doesn't look close enough to see if they're still breathing, telling himself that he can't care if they aren't.

"Where's Rey?" Finn asks, trotting to keep up with Chewbacca's long stride.

The wookiee shakes his head.

"Have you seen Jas?" Sinjir asks. "She's here, too. With me."

Chewbacca shakes his head again.

"I bet you twenty credits that wherever they are, they're together," Sinjir says, giving Finn a broad smile. "Jas has a nose for where the action's at."

"Any idea where she would be?" Finn asks.

"Close to Erdo," Sinjir says. "She's the one who sold me for my bounty after all."

Both Finn and Chewbacca look at Sinjir for further explanation.

He gives both of them a roguish grin. "Don't you both have impressive bounties?"

Finn's not sure. Chewbacca thinks about it, and then nods, accepting the reality that he does. After all, he was there on Tattooine when Jabba the Hutt was killed as part of the rescue of Han Solo as well. Finn's heard the whole story now - though probably somewhat exaggerated.

"Well, they can be useful," Sinjir says.

"What are you here for?" Finn asks.

"Erdo's a known accomplice of a former Imperial," Sinjir says cheerfully, as Chewbacca leads them through the empty service corridors, avoiding the patrolling droids. "My friend and I hunt former Imperial war criminals for the New Republic."

He rolls his shoulders in an expressive shrug. "The fact that most of the New Republic is gone suggests perhaps we should hunt different targets."

"The Resistance would be glad to have you back," Finn offers.

"I'm not so sure about that," Sinjir says. "At one point we more or less told Admiral Ackbar to stuff it. It _was_ rather a long time ago, but..."

Chewbacca offers a little input, then seems to remember they can't understand him. He reaches out to clap Sinjir on the shoulder reassuringly instead.

"So what's your mission?" Sinjir asks. "I suppose if our target hasn't shown up by now, we've been chasing our tails, and I'd much rather get back to chasing tail."

"We need to get Lando Calrissian off the planet," Finn says.

Sinjir double-takes. "Is _that_ who Erdo's here for?"

Finn nods. Sinjir looks thoughtful. "Who'd have thought _he_ was still kicking around the galaxy?"

Chewbacca offers some input, making a rough gesture toward Sinjir, and both get the idea.

"Well I know we humans don't live as long as Wookiees, but you've been around a while yourself, you know," Sinjir reminds, a little tartly.

Chewbacca chuckles, and pushes a door to the hangar open, revealing several ships down below. The bulk of the Millennium Falcon takes up most of the space in the center of the hangar.

"Well," Sinjir says, as he and Finn lean around Chewbacca to peer out. "Nothing's ever easy, is it?"

Finn sees armed guards surrounding the ship - smart, considering it was the most likely avenue of escape. He also sees another ship being prepared for launch.

"There's our search party," Sinjir observes, as serious faced guards load equipment onto one of the small ships. "Now just to get on board without anyone noticing."

"What about Rey and Jas?' Finn asks.

"Jas knows what to do, but if you want to go looking for them, I understand," Sinjir answers. "This could be our one chance to get down to the planet before everything goes to hell."

Finn suddenly realizes he's in command, that the full weight of the decision is on his shoulders, and the success of the mission rides on this.

He thinks of Rey; of how strong and capable she is. He knows she'll be okay, and no matter what happens from here forward, Finn won't leave her behind. He can't leave General Calrissian behind, either. His mission, given to him by Leia Organa herself, is to bring him back. Finn takes a deep breath and makes a decision he doesn't like, but that he knows is the right one.

"I hope you're right about your partner being with Rey," Finn says.

"Deep breath, Commander," Sinjir tells him. "These things have a way of working out."

-

"All signs point to them being right where we sent them," Snap says, holding court over the tactical table while still in his flight uniform. "I didn't see the Falcon but there's a whole blockade. It could be on any one of those control ships."

He indicates the planet on the display, bringing it into focus on the holo-display hovering over the table. Details about the planet and population expand scrolling next to the image of the planet itself. Temperate climates, breathable atmosphere. Advantages.

They need all of those they can get. The Hutt blockade is serious business and their fleet is only just beginning to recover from Starkiller. Mostly what they have now are small freighters and single man fighters, a few transports for personnel.

"They're in for the long haul," Snap says. "Well entrenched and well supplied. I saw some traffic down to the surface so I bet they've started looking for general Calrissian."

Poe can bet that when they find him, the Hutts will clear out for parts unknown or Nal Hutta. Neither affords them much opportunity but to do things the way the Hutts want. So, if they're going to act...

"Any operations will have to be executed by a very small force," Ackbar says. "We're not in a position to out-muscle them, and they have extensive resources to call upon."

"Luckily, they're not very smart," Leia says. Her hands are braced on the table, considering the information laid out for her as if the solution is there and just needs to be picked out. She lifts her gaze to Luke, next. "What's your opinion on all this? Rey's your student."

Luke gives her a small, serene smile. "I sent Rey and Finn because I thought they could handle it."

Leia crosses her arms over her chest, waiting for the rest.

"I still think they can handle it," Luke says.

Poe's pride wars with the worry about them in his chest. It's a strong enough concern that he actually considers arguing with Luke Skywalker.

"They're captives," Poe says, managing to keep his tone respectful as he speaks up. Every eye turns toward him as he butts into a conversation between two of his biggest heroes.

Luke and Leia both turn toward him in the same instant, and Poe feels a little weak in the knees. Like he's just shrunk several inches. Poe firms himself - he owes Rey and Finn his loyalty and he loves them. He can't give up on them if they're in trouble and there's something he cand o.

"At the time of the transmission, Rey was captive," Luke agrees. "But I sense that's not the whole picture."

"What are you saying?" Leia asks.

"I think we should give them time," Luke answers.

Poe's heart sinks.

"The Hutts are predictable," Luke continues. "And Rey and Finn are heroes in their own right. They might not need any help at all."

Poe takes a deep breath. He's a pilot in the Resistance before he's their boyfriend - if he can even call himself that. Rey is a Jedi. Finn is a Commander in his own right, a good fighter who had seen his way through a lot before Poe ever met him. they each have to belong to those parts of their lives before they belong to each other, at least until the First Order is stopped.

He knew what he signed up for when he left the Republic at Leia's invitation, moving himself and all of Rapier Squadron to where they belonged. Poe had known it would be dangerous, would test his skills to survive every time he flew. He hadn't ever expected it to be difficult in _this_ way.

"I can't tell you not to worry," Luke says, reaching out to put a hand on Poe's arm. "But I can tell you that I always came through. I think they will, too."

Poe understands the message, the entreaty to have faith - and of course, he _does_. But, he also has a lot of sympathy for captivity and what that can mean. He has Finn to thank for his ability to stand here right now and he'd pay the rescue back a hundred times if he gets the chance.

He knows the Resistance isn't abandoning Rey and Finn, just choosing not to act rashly. He finally nods, as if he really has any say.

"Captain Wexley, I want you to keep an eye on the situation unless something more urgent comes up," Leia decides. "Threepio, I want you to get some eyes and ears into the blockade fleet."

"Oh, I," C-3PO, ever attendant at her side begins, sounding startled. "Your Highness, might I remind you that all Hutt droids are fitted with restraining bolts-"

Leia gives him a sharp look, and with his years of experience to guide him, C-3PO goes quiet. 

"Commander Dameron," She says, at last, training her steady gaze on him. "We'll keep you updated on the situation and your advice will be taken into account, but for now we need you here and ready to act on other situations."

It is a subtle warning not to let this distract him.

"Yes, ma'am," Poe says. "You can count on me."

He hopes she can. Poe's unused to so deep an attachment to his partners. He isn't sure how best to divide his attentions. In the past, he's been content with casual flings, with momentary diversions. This feels like trying to close out part of his own soul.

They are taming him - wild, untamable Poe - with kindness and comfort and pleasure. With the idea that all three need each other and that's okay -at least until now, where he's cut off.

_At least they're together._

"Dismissed," Leia says, returning them to their duties.

-

"I have good news for you," Jas Emari says, letting herself into Rey's room.

It is a nicely appointed cell, but clearly still meant to imprison her. Rey wonders how many girls have been kept here before her. The walls are solid, thickly wrought steel. The door bolts itself into place when it closes like a vault, carefully isolating Rey. The rest of the decorations are carefully soft, and it's unclear whether that's to prevent occupants from hurting themselves or turning their makeshift weapons against their captors. 

"I hope it's that you're ready to move," Rey says, watching the open door behind Jas with hungry eyes. Even though she can feel that she's not isolated through the Force, even for someone who values quiet and isolation, the last two days without Finn and Poe have been too much.

"Our friends are no longer imprisoned," Jas says.

"What?" Rey asks, uncertain whether to think of this as good news or bad news. "Where are they?"

"It seems a Wookiee helped them escape," Jas says. "The place is in an uproar. They launched a few ships to the surface before they discovered that Sinjir and Finn were missing."

She gives Rey a sharp-toothed grin. Rey feels hope for the mission resurface. Maybe things _could_ still work out. If Finn could find General Calrissian, she and Jas could secure an escape route for them.

"Any word from the Resistance?" Rey asks, worried about the transmission she'd been forced to help send. She'd done her best to subvert it, but doubts any of that made it through.

_Poe's probably out of his mind_ , she thinks. She would be, if it was him and Finn and she was the one on a different assignment.

"Nothing," Jas says. "I think they have wisely decided not to play ball with the Hutts."

"They couldn't," Rey says. Loyalty or no, it would be foolish to give up Leia and Luke - the heart of the Resistance - for Finn and Rey, who were only just now proving themselves. 

"Of course not," Jas says. "But Leia is not known for always making the wise decision. It's what makes her a good leader, the fact that she knows people too well sometimes."

"We can do this without the Resistance," Rey says.

Jas nods. "We'll need to make it easy for our friends to get the General off the surface," she says. "Your ship is currently under heavy guard, and this ship is very heavily armed."

"We'll be outnumbered," Rey says. "And even if we take out this ship, there are others in the blockade."

Jas, from a pouch at her belt, produces Rey's lightsaber and tosses it to her. "My kind of odds."

Rey closes her hand around the hilt and feels the world begin to move again. Perhaps waiting, at times, is the best course of action, but she hates doing it. it feels like all those helpless years on Jakku, stuck and waiting.

"My kind of odds, too. Do you know anything about working the weapons on this ship?" Rey asks.

Jas smiles at her, all wicked and sharp teeth. "If you can fly, I can shoot."

"Lead the way," Rey says, following Jas out into the hallway. she keeps her lightsaber handy - it's only a matter of time before Erdo's men think to see if their other prisoner is still secure.

"The wookiee," Jas begins, in a lower tone as they creep along and avoid patrols heading for the heart of the ship. "Was it Chewbacca?"

"Yes," Rey says, surprised. "How did you guess?"

"I saw your ship. I'd know the Millenium Falcon anywhere, even if she's in much better condition than when I saw it last," she says. "I figured if the Falcon was here, and a wookiee..."

Pretty easy to put those two together, Rey agrees.

"It seems like the further the reach of the First Order extends, the smaller the universe gets," Jas observes, screwing a longer barrel onto her handheld slug-thrower. An older weapon, but an effective one.

"When we get out of this, tell me all about it?" Rey asks.

Jas laughs softly. "You'll owe me a drink. I can tell you then."

Rey's interested to hear it, but for now - Jas peeks around a corner cautiously and indicates that there are several guards around the bend. Rey puts both hands on her lightsaber and reaches out into the still waters of the Force, feeling the ripples that will soon turn into waves. 

Far away, but not too far to reach, she feels Finn. He's alive, and active. Further still, muffled by distance, she's sure that Poe is also alive and well. She wishes them both luck and draws a little strength from them before Jas gives the signal to strike.


	11. Chapter 11

Kes looks good. Every time Poe gets to call, he worries what he'll see. The memories of how his father looked after his mother had passed away are still quick to wake in Poe's thoughts. Everything in that year seems tinted grey and painful; tender, like the site of a broken bone that's not quite knit.

"Hey kid," his dad says, and he smiles. It's real, even if it looks a little strained, like they've all felt since the Hosnian massacre.

"Hey, Dad," Poe says, feeling better instantly, in spite of himself. It's like all the years have dropped away and there's Kes Dameron, real and strong and the most solid thing in Poe's ongoing universe.

"How's your boyfriend?" Kes asks. "How are you?"

Poe smiles helplessly, thinking about how much there is to cover between each one of these talks - how they have to catch up in fits and starts.

"Finn's good," he says, stumbling across the awkward proposition of telling his dad he has more than one special person in his life. "I finally told him how I felt, after he woke up. It's a little complicated."

"Was that before or after you crashed again?" Kes asks, cutting through Poe's tendency to avoid bad news.

"You heard about that, huh?" Poe asks, feeling a little sheepish - even his best stunts feel a little less amazing and a little more foolish when he has to explain them to his dad.

"Leia called me directly," Kes tells him.

"So, I kinda switched hyperspace lanes-" Poe starts[]

He can read that his father already knows by the fond, yet stern expression on Kes' face. Poe's nervous smile answers by instinct and he tries to slide out of the conversation like an overlarge coat.

"I told him - we told him - after that," Poe says.

"We?" Kes doesn't miss anything. Poe hesitates, aware of the long silence as he tries to find an answer that will make any sense.

"Stars," Kes says, a habit of replacing more serious swears that he never gave up again even after Poe clearly outgrew the need. "It really is complicated."

Poe nods, agreeing. He's not worried that his father will judge him for it, just trying to find the best way to explain.

"So there's also this girl," Poe says. "She's tough and kind and smart..."

This - sort of - ties into what he called about in the first place. His father is waiting patiently, listening to what Poe's telling him in a way that makes Poe forget his age. His father has always listened to him this way.

"She likes Finn, too," Poe says, lamely. He adds, because he has to, "we all like each other."

Kes waits him out, but he knows Poe well enough not to need further explanation. In fact, he's always been sparse and considerate with his words. 

"They take care of you?" Kes asks. "Treat you okay?"

"Better than okay," Poe says, feeling that strange uncertain and warm sensation low in his belly. "They're off on a mission now, but I'd like you to meet them."

Kes looks a little surprised and Poe realizes he hadn't really intended to make the offer, but he means it now that he has.

After a long moment where they're both quiet, Kes says; "it's pretty serious, huh?"

Poe's stomach knots. _Probably the most serious I've ever been and they're in danger right now._ He nods, unable to meet his father's gaze even through an image. "Yeah, pretty serious."

"Good," Kes says, and that's all. "Bring them home the next time the Resistance can spare you a few days."

"I have a question about plants," Poe says, after nodding agreement to his dad's proposition. 

" _Plants?_ " Kes asks. "I love you, kid, but you should keep away from them."

Poe laughs. "I gotta agree, but I have to plant-baby-sit. I was hoping you knew what this was?"

Poe picks up the littlest plant - which now _definitely_ looks different, but maybe not bad different. It's a little bigger, and developing strange clusters that Poe hopes isn't some kind of plant disease.

Kes leans into look. He tilts his head. "Looks like some kind of spider-plant."

Poe almost drops it. "What's that mean?"

"Relax," Kes says. "It's pretty common. They look a little like spiders, is all."

"They don't attract them or anything?"

"Not that I know of," Kes says. "have you noticed any more spiders than usual?"

"No," Poe says, suddenly feeling - and suppressing - the urge to check.

"Then it's probably perfectly normal," Kes says. "Looks like it may flower soon."

Poe feels better - if it's getting ready to bloom it's probably not dying.

"I want to set something up for Rey when she gets back," he says. "I need your help."

Kes, eager to conspire with his son whenever he can, leans forward expectantly.

-

"Can you use this?" Sinjir asks, displaying a blaster.

"Yeah!" Finn says, feeling much better about their chances just from that small advantage. He catches the blaster when Sinjir tosses it to him with the safety on. "Yeah, I'm a good shot."

He checks the charge level, taking stock of the situation.

"So where'd you learn how to stow away like that?" Finn asks.

"Never ask a girl her secrets," Sinjir says, in a smug tone.

"What?" Finn asks.

Sinjir sighs theatrically. "I picked up a few things over the years. First and foremost is 'never steal a ship before you have to'."

"Are we stealing it now?" Finn asks, looking down at the two unconscious figures of the remaining crew. Finn and Sinjir had waited for the search team to head out before making their move.

"I'd say it's practically stolen already," Sinjir says.

Finn helps him carry the men off the ship, first checking their pockets and flight suits for anything useful before stowing them in some cargo lockers.

"I don't suppose you have any way of getting word to the General that his rescue party has arrived?" Sinjir asks.

"He was going to get in touch with us," Finn says, "but I think he was expecting us to come in the Millennium Falcon."

"Who doesn't want to be rescued by that old bird?" Sinjir says in a wistful tone. "But I'm certain we'll find him willing enough to be rescued even by a Hutt stow."

Finn supposes his partner-in-crime has a point. He'd take a rescue from a garbage barge over no rescue at all.

"We were in touch with him by comm," Finn says. "I can try to reconfigure the ship's systems to zero in on the frequency."

"it's a long shot, but any old smuggler worth his salt keeps an ear to the ground when they can," Sinjir says. He steps out of the cockpit and begins to pull off his well-worn prisoner's garb in the relatively modest space around the corner.

"What are you going to do?" Finn asks, as he changes into one of the spare pilot's outfits.

Sinjir gives Finn his best rakish smile, jamming the helmet on his head as a crude disguise. "Your methods require the ship, mine are a little hands-on."

"What will you do if you get in trouble?" Finn asks.

"Regret everything, I suppose," Sinjir says. "But I'll comm back if I learn anything useful."

He taps his helmet indicatively, showing Finn his means of communication. "If you don't hear from me for a few hours, check the bars."

Finn can't tell if he's kidding or not, and by the time he pulls himself out from under the console to check, Sinjir has already left.

He's unsure what to make of that, but he guesses Sinjir has managed success to this point in their mission so there's no real harm in continuing to trust him. He works on his job instead, removing all the Hutt relay monitors from the transmission equipment so he can have an open channel without alerting the control ship.

_Why can't anything just go easy?_ Finn thinks, trying to remember back to his communications training. _Just a quick mission, rescue Lando and get out again._

It would be easier, Finn reflects, with the overwhelming might of the First Order. But steamrolling a problem out of the way isn't really the same as solving one. That's the difference between where Finn is now and where he comes from.

Finn finally gets everything rewired under the console and says a quick plea to the Force under his breath as he pushes his way out from underneath. He double-checks his frequency and then turns on the system.

Nothing catches on fire or throws out sparks so he figures all his patching and splicing is sound enough to try sending an audio transmission.

"Is anyone still listening on this frequency?" he asks. "This is the crew of the Millennium Falcon."

Finn's not sure what else to say. He has no idea how to assure any listeners that it's' not a trap. He has no idea how long he should wait or how often he should reach out.

_What if this frequency isn't constantly monitored?_

Finn waits five seconds, ten, feeling overwhelming doubt. He tries to remind himself it hasn't even been a full minute.

_What if they've already captured or killed him?_ Finn wonders.

"If you're still out there," Finn transmits, "I could use a sign."

A familiar voice answers over the frequency.

"I hear you," it says - with the same brilliance and life of the first transmission from Lando Calrissian. "I'm just hoping you have some kind of plan for that Star Destroyer that just came out of hyperspace."

-

The sirens and alerts are all overlapping now as Rey tries to get controls to respond to her overrides.

"We've got company!" Jas calls over the sounds of pounding at the closed blast doors.

"Activate the internal defenses," Rey says, pointing at the set of controls past her current reach. The big ship is very sluggish to respond to her controls, it feels like trying to pull free of the sinking sand every time she tries to turn the ship in a different direction.

"We have company _outside_ ," Jas says, scrambling for the controls Rey is pointing to anyway. "A star destroyer!"

Rey looks down at the spacial readout, registering the massive ship to the aft, lit up with the First Order identifier in Huttese. For a moment, Rey's breath catches in her chest. Is it the _Finalizer_? Has Kylo Ren come back for her so soon?

"Outgoing signal!" Jas hisses, baring her teeth.

_Erdo._ It breaks Rey's distraction.

"Shut it down!" Rey calls, getting her body back into motion, forging her hands to work on the controls. _It's just like the simulations... sort of._

The label on her screen reads _Colluder_ ; an example of First Order diplomacy if she's ever seen one. Maz Kenada's words come back to her. _The only war._

"It got through," Jas warns, turning back to her weapons systems. Rey feels several more salvos answer as Jas fires into the rest of the now scattering Hutt fleet.

"Just keep up the attack," Rey says. "The longer we can keep the blockade scattered, the more chance there is for ships to get off the surface."

"I got it," Jas says. "I'm going to open the launch bays."

"What?" Rey says.

"There's a signal from the Millennium Falcon."

This puzzles Rey. Hadn't Finn gone down to the planet after Lando? Were they engaged in all this for nothing?

_Who is flying my ship?_

Then there's too much to worry about without any extra questions.

" _Colluder_ is launching TIEs," Jas says.

"I can see that," Rey answers. The sleek black shapes race past the bridge window, raking the nose of their hijacked ship with blaster fire in a clear warning of the First Order's might.

Rey wrenches the big ship around after them, giving Jas an opportunity to blow a few out of space with her turrets - and the old barge begins to respond - actually seems to finally be getting some speed before something goes wrong. The ship shudders, and becomes more sluggish; the thrusters sputter and fail.

"Keep going!" Jas yells.

"I've got no power!" Rey yells back, frustrated. She hasn't overloaded it, she still has charged fuel cells, so _why_ \- "It's not my fault!"

Banging on the console in anger, Rey's thoughts go a million miles a second - someone must have overridden the thrusters at their source stations, leaving them a still target for the First Order to pick off. Rey bangs on the controls again as if she could bully them into heeding her commands.

Her control indication lights all flash red, then turn off.

"What did you do?" Jas asks.

"I didn't," Rey says, hoping she _hadn't_.

A comm spreads over the screen in front of Rey, revealing a uniformed man wearing First Order black and general's stripes on his collar. 

"This is General Regan of the _Colluder_ , to the parties attempting to seize control of the _Grand Palace_ ," he says, in a voice stained with age. Rey wouldn't bet he was a day under 70, but his eyes are steely and his features are firm.

"Prepare to surrender," he says, and Rey hears Jas growl behind her. Perhaps the universe has grown so small they've met her target too, after all.


	12. Chapter 12

"What do you mean, Star Destroyer?" Finn asks back over the comm. 

"Typical rescue effort," Lando's voice comes back, sounding exasperated. "What next? We get out through the garbage chute? Half thought out and-"

"Is it the _Finalizer_?" Finn asks, suddenly anxious that Kylo Ren might be here - that the First Order is after Rey, trying to take her again.

_Well, she beat him the last time,_ he has to admit. They all carry marks from the fight - even, Rey had told him, Kylo Ren. Finn would rather just get out of her before it comes to that again, with Lando safely in tow.

"No, it's uh," Lando says, sounding distracted. "The _Colluder_."

"General," Finn says, feeling instantly better, even if there _is_ a Star Destroyer up there. "I have a ship currently berthed in the docks of Trivera city. Can you get here?"

There's a moment of quiet. Finn's not sure what to make of it - maybe it finally feels like a trap to General Calrissian. Maybe he's just getting new information. Either way, Finn is aware of how tenuous the voice-comm between them seems.

"I'm seeing that the Millennium Falcon just left the launch bay of that Hutt ship," Lando says.

_Rey!_ Finn thinks. Chewbacca must have helped her get free. It makes his plans a little more complex.

"I'm not on the Falcon," Finn explains, "We captured a Hutt transport and we are on the ground now. Can you get to us, or do you need us to move?"

"There's a lot of security on that dock," Lando says. "I don't know if I can make it through without getting the wrong kind of attention."

Finn considers this. A plan begins to form in his mind. All of the strands of a rope are here, he just needs to start weaving them together.

"I need you to get to the closest bar," he says.

-

Sinjir picks up on the plan halfway through Finn's description, even with the copious amount of Corellian Brandy in his system. It feels impossible, unreasonable. Sinjir Rath Velus has been many things in his life, but he's proud not to count 'Hutt thug' as one of them. He lets Finn - _Commander_ Finn - finish detailing his idea anyway.

He's rarely wrong about bad things happening, but sometimes things are creatively bad.

"And you're sure," Sinjir is talking into his comm, voice low to avoid undue notice, "our target is alright with this plan?"

"He said he'd do it," Finn says.

Sinjir turns around to scope out the bar. He doesn't see any immediate competition - that's why he'd chosen this place along with proximity to his route of escape. If he's going to get ahold of Lando - and make a show of it - then this is as good a place as any. 

"This is going to be tricky," Sinjir says. "If anyone in here is sympathetic, I could get a blaster bolt between the eyes the instant I make a move."

"You want me to come back you up?" Finn asks. It's not even sarcastic. Sinjir finds Finn to be almost sickeningly earnest.

"No," Sinjir says. "You keep the ship fired up and ready to go. I have no idea how we'll get past the blockade, but our chances are better with a ship than flapping our arms."

"Alright," Finn says. "I'll be here. Call if you need anything."

_A better plan,_ Sinjir thinks, unfairly. All in all, he's had worse situations to work with, but then usually he'd had a few more friends to fall back on when things invariably went pear shaped.

The door into the bar opens, admitting a very handsome older man dressed - out of alignment with the rest of the patrons - in fashionable and soft looking clothing. It includes a cape. Sinjir knocks back the rest of his drink, slaps all of his stolen credits on the counter, and backs off the stool.

He only stumbles a little as he gets his feet under him.

"Lando Calrissian," he croaks, still halfway through the burn of whiskey in his throat. It sounds far more wavery and uncertain than he intended. "By order of the Hutt Grand Council, you're coming with me."

Lando tenses, playing the act of ambush a little _too_ far, Sinjir thinks. He goes for his blaster, and though Sinjir knows it's an act his heart pounds as he jerks his own up, already having it in-hand.

"Don't even think about it," Sinjir warns. _I've always wanted to say that._ He can feel the attention of the other patrons on him like unthrown daggers. _Please, no one decide to be a hero..._

Sinjir closes the gap between him and Lando, hoping the old smuggler will make this easy for both of them.

"I should have known the Hutts would play dirty," Lando says, as Sinjir takes his blaster.

_He_ does _know this is all an act, right?_

"Just walk," Sinjir says, as gruffly as possible.

Lando Calrissian, he notices, smells like cologne. In the middle of a planetary blockade. He keeps his chin up, holding onto his dignity. Sinjir has never quite managed to falsify it to that level. He finds himself charmed - and his heart perhaps beats a little faster, but he has the excuse of adrenaline as he escorts Lando out of the bar with one hand tight on his arm above the elbow.

"Alright," Lando says, once they're outside, turning up the alley back to the docks. "What's going on up there?"

"Beats me," Sinjir says, tucking Lando's blaster through his belt to preserve the illusion. "I'm just the henchman."

Lando gives him a sly look. "You used to work for Leia, didn't you?"

A little thrill. "Oh, you remember that," Sinjir says, playing it off as lightly as possible.

"Sure, I remember. What happened to the rest of your group?"

"Well," Sinjir begins, "this is hardly the time for small talk, but after the establishment of the New Republic, the majority of us had lives to go back to. Nora, I believe, went on to patch up her family, good for her. After Kashyyyk, I have no idea what became of Jom Borell. He had a future in ruggedly fashionable eye patches, perhaps."

The rest requires thought. "Temmin grew up. He's still a bang-up pilot, I suppose. Which lends itself to a few different futures. If he ever got rid of that murderous and ridiculous droid, I couldn't say."

It's not terribly exciting. Really just a fairly standard case of 'life moves on'; which despite all the theatrics is what keeps the universe going.

"You didn't retire?" Lando asks, as they approach the docks. Sinjir can see the guards - they look so much more intimidating than they had on the way out. Had those blaster rifles always been so big?

"You didn't either," Sinjir observes in return. He pauses, watching for any pattern in the movements of the guards - any indication that they're expecting immediate trouble.

"I was never any good at sitting still for too long," Lando says. "Did you bring any binders?"

"Sorry, chap, I'm all out," Sinjir says. "Looks like the guards might have some. I'll be happy to oblige you next time, if that's your thing."

Lando gives him a look for his cheek, and Sinjir can't _quite_ tell what it means. He flatters himself to guess it's something like 'too old to blush'. 

Instead of binders, Sinjir holds Lando's elbow tighter, pointing the blaster at him across his own body. It isn't the best way to control a potentially unruly prisoner, but was common enough that Sinjir figures he can get away with it.

"March," Sinjir says, a little more playfully than he really should at his age. 

"Well, I heard you once worked for the Empire, Rath Velus," Lando mutters, "but now I _believe_ it."

"Funny," Sinjir says, keeping his tone light. "I heard the same thing about _you_."

-

The First Order makes quick work of the blast doors, cutting through with plasma to retake the bridge. Rey senses their intent before they can act, and the gas grenade they toss in she catches with the Force, re-directing the momentum it already has to return it through the hole they cut. It's a pointless act of defiance. There's nowhere for her and Jas to run.

But perhaps it will give General Regan the idea not to underestimate her.

Jas doesn't seem surprised by the display of Rey's Force-powers. The Stormtroopers, on the other hand... the chaos doesn't last as long as Rey would like. The smoke is cleared, and this time instead of a gas cannister, a man steps through, confident that he is not entering an ambush.

"Very impressive," he says, in a dry, strong voice.

He's just as aged and just as solid in person. The First Order General sizes them both up with icy efficiency; as if neither woman is worth more than a glance to understand their whole value.

"A Jedi," he assesses of Rey, "and a Bounty Hunter. I should have guessed."

There is a motion in the hallway behind him; Erdo moving restlessly back and forth, trying to see in through the hole in his blast doors. He is much too large to squeeze through, so he must settle for glimpses. General Regan fills most of the opening with his body, leaving the Hutt straining to get a look at his own bridge.

"General," Rey says keeping her grip on her lightsaber tightly. "I knew the First Order condoned this blockade, but I never expected they'd answer the summons of the Hutts like a pet."

It does not get under the General's skin. He has years of experience to thicken it.

"We haven't come to assist the Hutts," General Regan says. "Reclaiming their ship for them was only a means to an end."

Rey doesn't like the sound of that.

"We're here for you," General Regan informs her.

"Funny," Jas says in a tense tone. "We come to find _you_. I should have expected you'd find someone new to hold your leash."

Regan does not take this bait, either. He looks briefly at the two women in front of him and seems to get all he needs. He turns to Erdo.

"We'll take the Jedi," he says.

"That wasn't part-" Erdo protests, in Huttese.

"It is now," Regan says, brusquely. He is not a man who allows defiance.

"I'm not going with you," Rey growls, holding very tightly to her lightsaber.

"Very well," Regan says, without a hint of annoyance. He beckons several of his attendant stormtroopers forward. "Kill the bounty hunter."

The Stormtroopers raise their rifles in a sharp, precise motion without an instant of hesitation.

Beside Rey, Jas goes tense. Rey knows she can deflect some bolts, but not all of them - not forever.

"No!" she protests, reaching out for the Force, trying to think of some way to stop this.

General Regan holds one hand up, and Rey knows that she's been put into this position deliberately. He will give her one opportunity to agree before he makes his demonstration. She can feel his confidence and determination.

"If you come with us, she lives," Regan says. "There is no other end to this standoff. If her life isn't enough to convince you, Jedi, I know you have other friends on the surface. it would hardly trouble me to wipe a few more Resistance members out of existence."

He hold his points like the winning cards in a Sabacc game, and Rey understands that Jas is only the example. She'll be the first to die if Rey refuses or resists, but not the only one. Finn, Chewbacca, and General Calrissian's lives are on the line, too.

"General," Erdo intercedes, while Rey is making the decision, weighing her chances against the lives of her loved ones. "I have already extended a ransom offer on the girl and her friends."

"Then you're a fool to think Leia Organa will answer it, and you had best hope you can recapture her friends in case she does," Regan says. "Girl? Your answer."

"I'll come with you," Rey decides.

Regan shows no sign of relief - he had engineered the situation to give her no other real options. He simply nods and takes her at her word.

"Leave your weapon," he says.

Rey bends down slowly and puts the lightsaber on the ground. Kylo Ren won't be pleased by the missing treasure, but she feels no need to correct the mistake her enemy is making. Her blade will make it back to Luke - somehow it always does.

Jas watches her with a guarded expression. Rey hopes that leaving her behind is the right choice. Her partner is with Finn, and it's far more likely she'll be rescued here. Plus, Rey needs someone to tell Finn and the Resistance what happened. 

When Rey takes a step forward, she feels the Force as her shield and support. It isn't quite guiding her, but reminding her she's not alone. The Stormtroopers keep their blasters pointed at her, even as she steps up next to General Regan - he does not order her to be put in binders.

He says nothing as he escorts her off the ship and onto the Star Destroyer.

Rey reaches out into the Force to feel Finn - near, safe, anxious. Then, further to touch against the ripples Poe leaves in his wake.

He misses them, and she covers her smile with her hands to keep it her own.


	13. Chapter 13

Poe's not sure how he knows it, but he's in the middle of building a mister for her plants when the certainty that she's in trouble reaches out to him. It's such a sharp and hard sensation that he sits up and back quickly enough to hit his head on the wall behind him.

"Ouch!" he yelps, the pain sharp and sudden enough to distract him for a moment as he reaches instinctively to check the back of his head. The wrench clatters out of his hand to the floor beside him, and BB-8 comes to peek at Poe around the edge of his project, beeping a concerned query in binary.

"Yeah," Poe says - his head hurts, and he can feel a raised bruise forming at the back of his skull but there's no blood and he's had worse. "I'm okay, buddy. I think."

He rubs the injury a little, making the pain sharper but somehow soothing it in the way that rubbing bruises does. _What was that all about?_

For a moment, it had been like Rey was standing right next to Poe, near enough to touch. Some part of her thoughts had touched his - across time and space.

BB-8 queries again, leaning closer to have a look at the bump.

"I just got a bad feeling," Poe says, and he leans back against the wall and looks up. If he hadn't felt Kylo Ren touch his mind with the Force, he'd have dismissed this as just nerves or loneliness.

But he's pretty sure it's real. Rey had - what? Called for help?

He gets up. It worries Poe that she can reach him now, when there's this much distance between them. Could _Kylo Ren_ find him? It's been months - nearly a year since Starkiller Base. Surely by now if Kylo wanted to and had the ability, he'd already have done so.  
 _And if Finn's healed by now..._

Their breathing space is gone. The First Order is on the move again. Kylo Ren is surely on the prowl. Maybe that was what had happened to Rey.

"C'mon, Beebee-Ate," he says. "We gotta go find Luke."

The droid follows Poe quickly, leaving behind his partially finished project half-scattered over the blunk floor. it doesn't matter if there's a mess - the people he shares his life with won't be there to trip on it- anything else can wait.

Poe checks the base front-to-back, and finds no sign of the legendary Jedi. He could be anywhere, but Poe thinks he has an idea. He knows where _he_ would be - where he goes when he wants to be alone and think.

"Buddy, do you know if Red Five is in the hangar?" Poe asks, after a glance over ops reveals nothing. Leia's not there either - it seems deceptively quiet. Things are under the watchful control of Admiral Statura, who looks, frankly, bored. Poe wonders if Kes' old adage of 'calmest before the storm breaks' is about to come true.

BB-8, after accessing a data panel to get the information Poe asked for, beeps an affirmative. Jackpot. If Poe knows anything about pilots - and he likes to think he has some idea - he knows Luke will be with his X-Wing. They've been apart for a while, after all.

He and BB-8 find Luke on the airfield - Luke has a wing panel off the lower left-hand S-foil. Poe's certainty wavers some - if _he_ felt something in the Force, but Luke Skywalker hadn't, maybe it really was just nerves after all.

Before he can change his mind, BB-8 beeps a joyful greeting to R2-D2 when the other astromech droid appears around the body of Red Five, carrying a tool for Luke.

R2-D2 responds in kind, though less enthusiastically. Poe gets the impression of an adult confronted by a toddler after a long day.

Luke notices Poe immediately, his expression serious. Poe still almost-recognizes him beneath the heavy beard, though they'd only formally met very recently. There's a familiar aspect - his eyes and voice; his _presence_.

"What happened?" Luke asks - and of _course_ he knows, senses instantly that Poe isn't just here to chat about X-Wings.

"I think Rey is in real trouble," Poe says.

-

Sinjir reaches the Hutt Transport again with General Lando Calrissian in binders acquired from the guards. It's not a situation he ever expected to deal with. 

"You really finessed those guards," Lando comments, as they head up into the ship.

"Well, I suppose all that practice working to capture Imperial war criminals has given me some idea how to proceed," Sinjir says.

Secretly, however, he is pleased to be recognized. He hopes that Jas has a handle on whatever's going on in the blockade, or this will be the shortest rescue in history.

Finn peers anxiously out of the cockpit at them, while Sinjir works to get the binders off Lando again, trying to will himself to be less aware of how warm and soft Lando's hands are where they make contact with his own skin. It's damnably distracting.

"There's enough confusion that lots of ships have made it out past the blockade," Finn says. "I hope you can fly this thing."

"What?" Sinjir asks, wheeling on Finn in surprise. "Why can't you fly it?"

"I'm not a pilot," Finn reminds. "I was just a Stormtrooper. I had to steal a Resistance member to escape, remember?"

Sinjir actually _doesn't_ remember that detail.

" _I_ can fly," Lando reminds them both, pulling his hands free of the binders and leaving them empty in Sinjir's grip. "Typical rescue."

He pushes past Sinjir into the cockpit. Finn gives way respectfully, stuttering an introduction.

"General Calrissian, it's an honor, I'm Commander Finn - we're here to get you back-" 

"To Leia, I know," Lando says. "I'm touched by the concern but I'm surprised this rescue doesn't involve a trash compactor, honestly."

Lando lowers himself into the pilot's seat and Finn sits behind him in the second row. Sinjir claims the co-pilot seat impulsively. He can, at least, hit the switches Lando points to in order to help get them off the ground.

"What are we going to do about the blockade?" Lando asks, sensibly.

"It's pretty broken up," Finn says. "I'm more worried about the _Colluder_."

"You and me both," Lando says, finishing the startup sequence, getting his hands on the yoke. The Hutt transport at least, does not betray them. It starts smoothly.

"We have backup," Sinjir says. "Chewbacca is on the _Falconhis_ partner are up there backing us up."

"Chewie's out here?" Lando says, his voice louder. "When is that old shag carpet finally going to retire?"

"Probably about the same time you and I do," Sinjir suggests, noticing the way Lando's voice and expression had warmed at the mention of his old friend. 

Lando gets them in the air, lifting off from the planet's surface. A comm light begins to flash on the console. 

"Now what?" Lando asks.

"Oh, Kriff," Finn says. "I didn't return the comm frequencies!"

He dives under the console again, pulling wires to begin to fix it mid-flight.

"Another transport is lifting off," Lando announces. He flips two switches, and points to one for Sinjir to activate. "They're pursuing us."

"Give me five minutes and I can get you in touch with them," Finn's voice emerges from under the console.

"Switch places with me," Lando orders. He's looking at Sinjir - _why is he looking at_ me _?_

"What?" is all Sinjir can manage.

"You're wearing the pilot's uniform - there's no way this will work if they see _me_ flying it," Lando says, already getting up. "So switch with m e."

He crawls over Sinjir, leaving little option but compliance.

"I've got comms back!" Finn shouts, muffled.

Lando gets his hands on the copilot controls, turning off the autopilot that had kept them steady while they switched seats. He's already transferred the ship’s piloting functions over. The incoming comm light continues to flash. Sinjir figures he'd better put his hands on the yoke at least, even if he hasn't the slightest idea what he's doing.

The transport suddenly bucks and shakes.

"They're firing at us!" Lando warns, after the fact.

Sinjir takes a deep breath and slams on the receive button.

"-repeat, why are you leaving the surface, Shuttle Two?" The video shows a roughly stubbled man in a pilot's outfit identical to Sinjir's stolen one. 

"We are returning to the Grand Palace," Sinjir says trying to keep his tone from climbing an octave in anxiety. It's the first thing that comes to mind. The second one, Sinjir gives voice to before really considering.

"So if you'd please stop firing on us while we attempt to _do our jobs_ -"

"Why didn't you answer your comm right away? The situation is hectic - we've got ships taking off all over the place and we've been ordered to stop as many as we can. Why are you leaving the surface?" 

_Why are you asking so many blasted questions?_ Sinjir thinks.

"Comm troubles," he says, trying to make it sound self-evident. "We couldn't contact our search party, and we're having trouble answering anything from the blockade."

Erdo's man seems to consider this and then Sinjir. _Just my luck we got the most suspicious goon._

"Sometimes all it takes is a good thump right between the comm controls and the oscillator, you can get these comms going again," the other pilot says, helpfully. "It's cheap technology - the Hutts are rolling in money, but I'll be kriffed if they don't buy the cheapest surplus they can find..."

"Oh don't worry!" Sinjir says, voice high and tight. "Consider the entire console thoroughly thumped. There's nothing for it, I'm afraid. We have to go back up for repairs."

"Alright, Shuttle Two. Sorry for the warning shot," the other pilot says. "You can't be too careful with Resistance members around..."

Sinjir feels cold sweat pooling at the back of his neck. Is the man toying with him?

"Alright," Sinjir says, reaching out to turn off the comm. He sees Lando prepared to gun it, ready to run at top speed if they have to. His knuckles are pale on the co-pilot yoke.

"Wait!" the other captain says just as he's about to flick the switch, and Sinjir's heart stops for a moment.

"Do you want me to comm back to the Grand Palace and tell them you're coming and about your comm issues?" the man offers.

Sinjir is perplexed. He looks back at the pilot, seeing an almost-shy smile on his face. _He's actually trying to be helpful?_

He tries to make sure his answering smile is not a grimace. "That would be extremely helpful, thank you, Captain...?"

"Rinault - ah, I mean, Jaze - but you can call me Rinault," Captain Jaze says, stuttering.

An extremely strange sensation pours down Sinjir's spine, and he's conscious of both Finn and Lando looking directly at him, and of his need to give zero sign that this was out of the ordinary. 

"Listen, you must be new, and it's been a crazy week," Captain Jaze continues, stumbling through the preamble while Sinjir feels his ears beginning to burn pink. "When things settle down a little, can we have lunch? I know shooting at you isn't the best way to meet..."

"Ah," Sinjir says, trying not to laugh, holding it in with all his might. _Why can't this ever happen to me in normal circumstances?_ "That sounds good, Rinault. I'd enjoy that."

Maybe, Sinjir would. It's unfortunate that Captain Rinault Jaze is very likely to lose his job for letting them go. 

"Listen," Sinjir continues. "The comms are about to go out again. I'll look you up when this whole situation gives us a breather."

He terminates the promise by cutting the comm, and then leans back in his seat, takes a deep breath, and laughs until the mania eases.

-

Aboard the _Colluder_ , Rey finds the maze of corridors almost comforting. The First Order ships are not identical to the old wrecks of Imperial vessels she'd scavenged from for years, but it's near enough that she has a rough idea of where they are and where they're going. 

General Regan does not have her put in binders, or strapped to a table in a dark room. Instead, once she's aboard the ship with her own retinue of Stormtroopers to escort her, the General seems to forget she's there. She finds herself swept along in his wake all the way to the bridge.

As they step onto the Star Destroyer's raised deck, Rey takes it all in - the controls are sunk down below the level of the windows, which line the furthest point of the ship's bow in a massive array of cold space. It seems like a terrifying, dizzying view of how much is around them, and Rey resists the urge to move forward after the General has come to a stop. The view - impressive though it is - feels painfully limited. She wants to press her face against the window and see everything around them; understand how far away from the blockade they are, or perhaps see the Millennium Falcon.

"Sir, several ships have escaped the Hutt blockade," one of the officers reports, looking up from his console. "Shall we pursue?"

"Leave the Hutts to clean up their own mess," General Regan says. "We've aided them beyond what they deserve today already."

He glances at Rey, and she realizes he had come for one thing only - to capture her. He is too patient to be greedy - to experienced to overstep his bounds or over-reach. There are other targets here - Rey and he both know that the Resistance will very likely reclaim General Calrissian - but Rey is his bird in the hand. He's a survivor of the Empire, and that makes him dangerous.

"Set a course for the Outer Rim," General Regan says. "Return to Base 1977, and don't report our cargo to anyone. It doesn't leave this room."

He sweeps his gaze back over the Stormtroopers escorting her, as if making sure his point is hammered home, and Rey wonders why she'd been displayed on the bridge at all in such a manner if her presence was supposed to be a secret.

"Sir, shouldn't we be sure-"

"Those are my orders," General Regan commands, speaking over his subordinate. "Carry them out."


	14. Chapter 14

"Beebee-Ate, I need you to keep us from being seen as long as possible," Poe says, zipping up his flight suit.

BB-8 beeps a quiet affirmative, waiting patiently below the belly of Red Five - Luke's idea for camouflage. Poe wishes he'd gotten to fly it under better circumstances, but he intends to take good care of the old bird, anyway. Next time, he can just joyride.

Poe pulls the activation switch for the droid socket and watches the mechanics slip off BB-8's sides ineffectively.

BB-8 grumbles faintly, beeping in a disapproving tone and firing a connector cable up to the droid access port to manually work the device designed for the older models of astromechs. 

Poe trusts BB-8 to get it done, pulling on his helmet and climbing up the boarding hand-holds built into the side of the X-Wing.

"If Vober Dand has anything to say about this..." Poe mutters to himself, "I'll be cleaning exhaust manifolds for weeks."

He pauses in the cockpit to familiarize himself. The equipment all looks primitive in comparison to what he's used to. It's familiar, too - it reminds him of his mother's A-Wing, of flying with her hands over his on the yoke.

He can almost hear her talking him through the startup sequence. He takes a deep breath, checks that BB-8 has gotten securely into place, and turns off his comm. No one is launching or landing, it should be okay - and if anyone yells at him to stop, he can claim he never heard it.

Childish, but he hopes they'll understand. For all Poe is supposed to be Resistance first, Rey and Finn are Resistance, too. They're part of his family now, the one he _chose_. He wants them to be safe, wants to be with them.

"You ready?" Poe asks BB-8.

BB-8 chirps, telling Poe he's done what can be done to transfer Poe's preferences to the old X-Wing. He fires up the T-65, and listens to the differences in engine sounds, watches the dials and gauges as the startup cycle engages for any signs of trouble.

"Luke fixed this thing up pretty good, huh?" Poe says, more to himself.

Everything is just a hair off from his instincts, enough to put Poe a little on edge. It'll keep him on his toes, and he has time to get used to the changes while in hyperspace.

BB-8 relays that the course Snap had taken is programmed in, and Poe closes the canopy hoping that he can clear the runway fast enough to prevent anyone from coming after him.

On the ground, acting as his lookout, Luke gives him a lifted hand to see him off, and Poe salutes as he rolls by, feeling the old shocks on the landing gear till every imperfection in the runway becomes as clear as if Poe was walking over it barefoot.

"Okay," Poe says, finding a certain sort of peace in his pounding pulse and the jounce of the runway under his wheels. The rush of air as the antigrav works in tandem with the aerodynamics of the X-Wing to get them airborne.

Poe slips away as quickly as he can, hoping he's not making a costly mistake. He knows where he should be.

-

"Guys," Finn says, as they slowly approach the Grand Palace. Both Sinjir and General Calrissian look a little strained and anxious - they've been talking the whole time about what their plan should be, while Lando maintains a course for the ship they're supposed to be approaching.

"I don't know," Sinjir continues, the argument in a low tone at least. "Fly casual."

Lando gives him a sharp look. "Are you going to flirt your way out of this one, too?"

"I had nothing to do with that," Sinjir says.

"'I'll meet you after everything has calmed down'?" Lando reminds.

" _He_ started it," Sinjir reminds. He sighs theatrically. "I could really use a drink."

Finn presses himself against the side of the cockpit window, checking all the directions he can see. He tries to get their attention again. "Guys...?"

"Well, you could take Captain Jaze up on his offer," Lando teases, smoothly.

"I hardly think he'll be in any mood for it. We should make a break for it while we can," Sinjir says. "The Falcon's not even on board the Grand Palace anymore, and I have no desire to revisit those cells. I'm sure Jas would understand..."

"Guys," Finn repeats, raising his voice a little. "Where's the Star Destroyer?"

"What?" Lando asks, looking quickly down at his controls. He touches a few of the buttons for the spacial interface, looking at the slowly re-forming blockade represented by big, white dots labeled in Huttese. However, as Finn has confirmed visually, the even bigger red dot labeled with the First Order emblem has disappeared.

"Did it go into hyperspace?" Sinjir asks. "Our lucky day..."

"Why would it go into hyperspace when Lando's still here with us?" Finn asks. "Rey and Jas had to have been behind the breakup of the blockade ships... did they get away on the Falcon?"

"Bother," Sinjir says, irritated. 

Lando chimes in unexpectedly, and echoes Sinjir. "What kind of rescue mission is this?"

There's a pause while they both look at each other afterward, and Finn takes stock of the situation. He has a sinking sensation. "What if they already got what they came for?"

"What do you mean?" Sinjir asks, turning away from his stare-off with General Calrissian. "I should think that there's enough value in the target that you, me, and him make that they wouldn't leave without us."

"I think they took Rey," Finn says, his heart sinking lower still. It wasn't the _Finalizer_ , but the First Order is the First Order. "She's a Jedi, so..."

"A Jedi?" Sinjir asks, sighing, leaning back in the pilot's seat. "Of course. What about Jas and Chewbacca?"

The communicator indicator light blinks on again serendipitously - or ominously, Finn thinks. All three of them look at it with some dread.

"It's not coming from the Grand Palace," Lando observes. "Maybe your boyfriend is calling back to make sure we made it okay."

"It gets funnier _every_ time you say it, Calrissian," Sinjir retorts. "Shall I answer it?"

Finn flips the switch, figuring no matter what it is, it will help them decide what to do next. Chewbacca's face fills the screen, and the Wookiee chuffs and barks a greeting that makes Sinjir smile. Lando pushes him out of the way.

"Hey, look at you you old fuzzball," Lando says. "You don't look a day older - how do you do it?" 

Chewbacca answers, and Finn gets enough to understand that his enthusiasm is at least as bright as Lando's. They smile at each other, old friends that haven't seen each other for a while. 

"Hey," Lando says, after a moment, and they both seem to sense what's coming, growing more serious. "Listen, I'm sorry about-"

Chewbacca groans a sad-sounding answer.

"Let's talk about it later," Lando agrees. "What's the status? Do you have everyone else?"

Chewbacca shakes his head. 

"Rey's been captured," a voice from off-screen on the falcon supplies.

"Jas!" Sinjir exclaims, sounding pleased in spite of his earlier words. "Good to know you've taken care of yourself after leaving me to rot in a Hutt cell."

A Zabrak female - Jas apparently - leans into view next to Chewbacca. "You were fine."

"I am _now_ ," Sinjir sulks. 

"Did that Star Destroyer take Rey?" Finn asks, interrupting their forming argument. 

"I'm afraid so," Jas says. "I was lucky enough to have a distraction and an escape pod ready, but the First Order General didn't leave her much choice."

Finn sits back, not liking the news. 

"It looks like we've graduated from hunting Imperials to hunting the First Order, Sinjir," she says.

"Well," he says, his voice dripping with self-deprecating irony, "a rat in a different colored suit is still a rat."

"So what's the plan?" Lando says. "No offense, but the sooner we get out of here, the better. As long as the Hutts are far behind us, I don't care what we do."

Finn is faced with another decision as his position in the Resistance demands. Does he secure Lando Calrissian back at the base, or does he go after Rey now, before she's gone completely out of reach? He knows where his heart is calling him.

There's no right or wrong choice - each thing is equally important. Any decision will lead to more decisions - and he knows if he goes back with General Calrissian, there's a chance something will prevent him from going after Rey.

He has to behave like a leader, now, but unlike the First Order, he doesn't have to discard his humanity to do it. Finn looks over his group, seeing their tired faces. He knows what to do. He has to give the Resistance more minds and bodies, since they'll be missing Rey and Finn.

Rey will probably be okay. He has every belief that she'll have the situation under control - even so, a little backup was never unwelcome when it came from friends. 

"Alright," Finn says, already constructing a plan to support his decision. "Let's dock up with the Falcon - Chewbacca can take you home and I can take this transport and go after Rey."

"This thing doesn't have a hyperdrive," Lando observes. "You'll never catch up to a Star Destroyer, and the Hutts are going to want-"

Chewbacca interrupts with a faint growl of alarm, and Lando quickly looks down at the transport controls.

"He's right," Lando says. "Are we expecting any company?"

Finn sees the indication of a new, smaller ship exiting hyperspace, and strains to see it out of the view window of the transport.

From the Falcon, Jas' voice chimes in, "I'd know that X-Wing anywhere."

-

The General does not forget about Rey forever. She's just wondering if she can subtly influence one of the pilots - if this thing can even be said to _have_ pilots - when he seems to finally remember his guest.

The stormtroopers around her are too well trained to even fidget.

"In the past I have known Jedi to be honorable," General Regan says. He's not looking at her, so it registers to her distracted thoughts only belatedly.

She looks at him, waiting for the rest - he almost seems to sense when he has her attention. 

"I doubt you've known many Jedi," Rey says.

He glances at her over his shoulder, his posture erect and his stance perfect despite his age. She is acutely aware of it at that moment, how many conflicts even his human lifespan has encompassed.

"The point I'm making is that I'd like to trust you," General Regan says. "Having to restrain you is uncomfortable and inconvenient for you, and a drain on my resources. I could give you crew quarters instead, if I can count on your word to mean something."

It's such a strange offer that it almost confuses Rey completely.

"You're either taking me to slavery or death," she says, lifting her chin. "I have no intent to make it easy on you."

"I'm following orders to return you - whole and unharmed - to Supreme Leader Snoke," Regan says, unmoved by her defiance. "I see very little reason for such prohibitive measures if the intent is to kill you."

It leaves off one very important point to her - but underneath all of that, Rey thinks she sees an opportunity.

_He's taking me right to Snoke!_

Beyond that, she sees no reason not to take advantage of his civility for the chances it will afford her later. It doesn't cost her anything to be a liar to some ex-imperial. She has lied and stolen from better men just to survive. And she's been trained for this. 

"I'll take the quarters," Rey says. "I've already seen the inside of a First Order cell."

Regan smiles at her very faintly, a dry, small expression that suggests he's only going to trust her a very small amount. It will be enough. "That's the better decision."

Rey doesn't like it, but Regan is as good as his word. Her guards - ordered not to speak to her - escort her to quarters that are rather more spartan than the silken cell Erdo had given her.

_I've been kidnapped twice and both times treated like a doll,_ Rey thinks, angrily.

She wonders if Regan has already forgotten the position of power he'd found her in, how she'd taken control of the Grand Palace. She doubts it. More likely, he thinks himself more capable than Erdo - that is, of course, probably true.

There's nothing to do - the quarters contain a bunk that's little more than a plastic mattress and a sheet and a bathroom that speaks of extreme economy - the entire space serves as a refresher with a toilet practically jutting out into it. It's one way to keep everything sterile.

The walls are grey and featureless. It reminds Rey, in a lot of ways, of the desert she grew up in. Devoid of some basic element needed for intelligent creatures to thrive.

She eschews the bed and sits cross-legged on the bare floor, and it surprises her that the big ship is utterly still. She can't feel any sign of the powerful hyperdrive engines, or any indication of movement at all. It's as if the Star Destroyer is perfectly still while space cuts itself rapidly over the arrowhead of its hull.

Rey closes her eyes and feels the speed of the ship with her thoughts, reaching out into the Force to sense the rhythms of the ship. It's easy to feel the limits of even this massive vessel in its still pocket against the rushing stars-and-void beyond.

Briefly, as Rey reaches out into the stars and the nearer constellations of men in formation throughout the ship, she wonders when this had become her instinct instead of anger and lashing out. 

Perhaps when she had passed Luke's test - but Rey feels just a little doubt that she's really had all the training she needs when she visualizes Kylo Ren.

The confrontation _is_ coming; the imbalanced Force is pulling them together as surely as magnetic opposites. 

She doesn't know if she'll ever be serene when they come face to face, not after what he'd done to her friends. There's an excitement at her core to test herself against him again, and it has a lot to do with payback.

It's a decidedly un-jedi feeling.

These thoughts are interrupted by some change in the flow of life around her. For the most part, the men and women stationed on this ship move together, in quiet tides that seem as timed and orderly as any precision instrument. Like the way pistons fire on some old engines - each moving because the pieces around it were also moving. A chain reaction.

But there's one link - one red pinion of distress that Rey senses amongst the more subdued and focused energy of the ship. Someone out there is distressed - running and hiding from something, she thinks. Rey reaches just a little deeper...

_They know. They have to know... I have to get off this ship._

-

Poe joins them on the Falcon once they've gotten far away enough from the Hutts to keep from being interrupted. They'd left the blockade in a confused disarray behind them. It had seemed unable to decide between trying to recover and giving pursuit.

He's been in Red Five’'s cockpit long enough to appreciate the improvements in the T-70's design. He knows BB-8 is glad to be freed of the jury-rigged droid socket, too. 

_Still, Red Five!_

Finn greets him with an enthusiastic hug,and Poe returns it with glad relief. Finn's okay, and beyond he can see several other figures that speak well of the success of the mission. 

"General Calrissian," Poe says over Finn's shoulder, saluting as respectfully as he can around Finn's hold. 

"Alright, alright," Lando waves him off. "I haven't even agreed to come back to all that."

Poe grins, recognizing some theatrics in Lando's reluctance.

"General Organa herself sent a rescue party for you," Poe reminds. "Are you really going to tell her no?"

Lando's expression slowly changes to distant fondness. Poe recognizes - and echoes - the sentiment. 

"Maybe one time," Lando says, in a faintly humorous tone of surrender. "Leia's pretty persuasive."

And they all love her for it.

Finn finally lets Poe go, and Poe sees something different on his face before he turns around to address the assembled group. It's a firmness, a certainty that he's going the right way with the right people; making the right decision.

Poe finds a place to lean in the common room where he won’t offend anyone with pilot funk.

_If only mystery messages from my Jedi girlfriend would give a chance to hop through the 'fresher._

"So here's what we know," Finn says, including the whole group as he stands in front of it, arrayed over the chairs and tables and paying careful attention to him.

Poe doesn't know two of them - there's a Zabrak, which surprises him, and a dark-skinned human roughly General Calrissian's age who seems comfortable enough sitting next to her that Poe suspects they must know each other.

"Rey was taken by the First Order Star Destroyer _Colluder_ , under the charge of General Regan," Finn says. "She agreed to go when he threatened to kill Jas and everyone else."

"And," the Zabrak adds in accented common, "he's _our_ target."

"Oh, let it go Emari," his companion says. "It's not as if the Republic is likely to pay the bounty on his head anyway."

"You two are bounty hunters?" Poe asks, wondering how they'd gotten involved.

The Zabrak nods. Her companion looks less certain. He makes a gesture by tipping his hand back and forth as if to demonstrate a balancing act.

"They hunt war criminals," Lando says. "Jas and Sinjir used to get a commission from the Rebellion to bring in Imperials who needed to answer for their crimes."

"That's dried up a bit," The man - Poe guesses _he's_ Sinjir - puts in. He has an accent too - one Poe has come to recognize as faded Imperial.

"But every so often we still get a lead," he continues, almost cheerfully. "And since we're so _good_ at it, we answer the call."

"That was a few hours ago," Finn interjects, trying to get the conversation back on track. 

"Do you know where they went?" Poe asks, feeling his hope begin to fade. The most likely answer is that she's been taken to Kylo Ren to appease - whatever his fascination with her is. Likely, she's being courted for recruitment - which means something significantly less gentle in the First Order. 

"Boys," Jas puts in, calling their attention to her. "I had a suspicion we might get separated, so when I brought the clothes Erdo wanted her to wear, I slipped a tracking device into the hem."

She smiles, an expression involving a lot of pointy teeth and a victorious gleam in her eyes. It's the sort of grin that makes Poe nervous, even as his spirits soar. .   
"Thank you!" Finn exclaims, with a relieved smile.

"Never say I didn't learn anything after all those years losing Norra or Temmin," Jas says, piquing Poe's interest briefly before she continues. "So, we have two courses of action. Rescue the Jedi and return General Calrissian to the Resistance."

"I'd like to return _myself_ to someplace civilized for a while, too, if you don't mind," Sinjir adds. "I'm not as suited for unending adventures as I used to be."

Finn looks back at Poe, as if seeking his input on the whole matter.

"I can go after Rey in Red-Five, if you'll give me the tracking device," Poe says. "But you're in command here, buddy. I'm just here to back you up."

Finn looks pained. "I'd like to come with you."

The rest of the room seems to fade away as Poe considers it. "Be a tight fit."

It might be do-able in Black-1, but Red-5 was even more packed in. If they got into any fights, it'd be a real mess, the oxygen generator would be taxed, and forget it if there were any malfunctions, but maybe.... maybe it's _physically_ possible.

"I'd like to try," Finn says. "We'll have to steal a second ship to get out anyway."

Poe keeps his thoughts on that subject to himself. Rey was their friend, someone they both love. She deserves to know they're coming for her. 

"If I know Rey, she's probably almost stolen a TIE already, but you're right," Poe says, resolving himself to severe discomfort for a little while. "General, you need to get back to Leia."

"So I hear," Lando says. "I don't suppose I get to pull rank yet and tell you to wait and get some backup?"

Poe thinks about it - he hardly wants to make an enemy of General Calrissian or give him a bad first impression, but his mind is made up. "Sir, if I already ignored General Organa's orders, you can consider yours in very good company when I ignore them, too."

"Alright, alright," Lando says. "I don't envy you two but I hope you find your friend. May the Force be with you."


	15. Chapter 15

Barely an hour later, Poe is regretting every part of his life. He trusts BB-8 enough to keep them on course, following the co-ordinates they're getting from the device Jas had given them. It had required an adapter to interface to the old T-65 technology, and now it juts down against Poe's knee under the main console. 

For the first 20 minutes, that had seemed almost unbearable.

"You know," Poe says, his cheek against Finn's back because they _have_ to be that close. "All of my fantasies involving cockpits never took into account not being able to feel my legs."

Finn shifts a little, and it sends pins and needles down Poe's left leg in a rush.

"Sorry," Finn says. "Do you want to switch?"

"If I sit in _your_ lap, I can't reach the foot controls," Poe reminds.

"But you'd be able to see the display," Finn says. "Do you really need the pedals if we're in hyperspace?"

Poe lets the misterm - _pedals_ \- go. Old as Red-5 is, it isn't a bicycle! "I don't think we have enough room to switch. It's one thing with the canopy up, but..."

Finn shifts again, covering Poe's hand on the yoke. "You fantasize about cockpits?"

"Frequently," Poe admits. "Not always in a sexy way. Just - layouts sometimes. Or famous ships."

"You want to fly the _Millennium Falcon_ ," Finn guesses.

"Sure," Poe says. "But I'm in _Red Five_ right now, buddy. No need to cheat on her."

Finn laughs and Poe can feel it run through the parts of his body that are still awake. 

"Did you just take it?" Finn asks, shifting again. Poe can feel how close his crotch is to the yoke, feel his body heat against the back of his hand, and Finn's grip over the front of it.

"And risk pissing off Luke Skywalker?" Poe asks. "I wouldn't dream of it. Luke told me to take it."

"Wow," Finn says. He shifts over Poe's lap again, and now Poe's blood is beginning to move - maybe there's a little extra since none can get to his legs. 

"Finn," Poe says, hearing the warning in his own voice.

"Sorry," Finn says. "It's just that you're _right_ there and we're touching so much and-"

This time when he moves, Poe can feel his half-formed erection against the curve of his thumb on the yoke and he gets it.

"Well," Poe says, getting his other hand free and switching his grip so he can palm over Finn's hard-on. "Haven't you ever fantasized about getting off in the pilot's seat of a legendary ship?"

Finn sighs out, seeming to relax, pushing himself into Poe's touch - not that there's much of anywhere else to go.

"Not really, that wasn't my thing," Finn admits. "I'm sorry, I know this isn't really the place or time."

Poe squirms up to kiss the exposed back of Finn's neck over the collar of his old jacket.

"This okay?" he asks, moving his hand over Finn's cock through his pants. Poe's glad his flight gloves are back at base, propping up the corners of the project he'd had to abandon.

"You don't have to," Finn sighs out, trying to look over his shoulder at Poe, but mostly just crushing him against the thin seat padding. 

Poe lets his hand go still until he's sure what Finn wants. 

"Right," Poe says. "But assuming I want to, is it okay with you?"

Finn laughs a little, letting his nerves out. "Yeah, it's good with me."

Poe curls his hand back over the rough bulge of fabric and strokes firmly, focusing on that instead of how cramped they are. Finn leans back against him and spreads his knees as wide apart as he can. Poe can feel the way Finn's breathing changes.

_Maybe sometime when we can open the canopy..._ Poe thinks wistfully about repeating the exercise. There's something appealing about being so close together - every shift over Poe's lap makes Poe harder, even though there's practically nothing either can do about that. The moments of teasing friction are awesome.

Finn gasps out when Poe gets his zipper, working his hand inside.

"You," Finn starts, as Poe touches him skin on skin and feels how _hard_ he is, like they've been at this forever. Maybe they have been. Finn pulls in a breath, pushing his hips up into Poe's fist as much as he can, which also rubs his ass against Poe's cock - and maybe they hadn't quite thought this through.

Poe resigns himself to rescuing Rey with a dark, wet stain plastered over his crotch if that's what it comes to. It's probably not the most embarrassing thing that will ever happen to him.

"You don't think," Finn continues, after reeling himself in again, "that Master Skywalker will - uh- _know_?"

Poe has no idea what Finn's talking about initially. He's too focused on the way their bodies are rubbing and fitting together.

"Through the Force or something," Finn continues when Poe doesn't answer. "That we-"

The thought actually gives Poe pause, and then he laughs. "Finn, buddy, I don't think that's how that works. Besides, I don't care if the whole universe knows."

It's probably not the point that Finn is trying to make, but Poe doesn't think he can possibly adore Finn more than in his worried-but-horny state.

"Do you want to stop?" Poe offers.

"Mmm-mmmn," Finn negates, "please don't. But you've got to back me up when we see Luke again."

"I'll always back you up," Poe promises.

He curls his hand tighter over the straining head, easing his pointer finger along the trail of precum in the slit, tracing it over soft but eagerly-firm skin

Finn sighs out a smooth, pleasured sound as he rocks into Poe' s touch in a slow, building rhythm. There's no space for anything more frantic, so they are at the mercy of the slow climb until Finn gets there, going tense and still as he pours his release into Poe's palm in spurts. Finn makes a low noise as he cums which echoes pleasantly in the confined space.

_That_ , Poe thinks, _will go into any further fantasies involving cockpits._

-

Sinjir spends almost all of the return trip - if he could call it that, considering he'd never been to the place he's going - wondering if this is the right decision. Jas at least seems content to go along for the ride, dismissing herself from the cockpit early to take a nap. Sinjir isn't worried about having to go it alone again.

He'd tried that - earnestly - for a while. it had worked out as a string of dirty bars in a string of aging cities on increasingly forgettable planets. Too much thinking, until he'd gone soft around the middle and almost - _almost_ \- forgotten his instincts.

Then, one day Sinjir woke up and he was old. There was no explaining it.

He supposes they all are now, and yet a few things seem the same.

_The First Order feels awfully familiar, for one,_ he thinks.

The Falcon's cockpit feels familiar when he settles into the back of it,and though both of her pilot seats are filled with echoes from her past, there's a void. In the quiet - hyperspace travel is so _dull_ \- it's clear that something's missing.

"Never thought I'd fly her again," Lando says, sitting back and turning his chair halfway. He looks surprised to see that his only audience is Sinjir.

"I heard, in several rather blasphemous circles, that even Han lost track of her for a while," Sinjir says, smoothing over Jas' absence. She'd gone straight to one of the recessed bunks before anyone else got to them. 

Chewbacca nods and huffs a begrudging agreement.

 

"Well," Lando says, fondly. "She always turns up again. It's like a lucky talisman."

Sinjir supposes it is - once, the Falcon had crossed your path the first time, it seemed like at any moment she might swing back through your life. _For good_ or _ill_ , Sinjir allows. 

Lando reaches up idly, touching a pair of bronzed Sabacc dice that hang from the overhead console, swinging faintly with the vibration of the hyperdrive, and then with more animation as Lando taps his fingers against them.

Chewbacca leaves them behind, apparently trusting Lando to handle at least the minimal interaction required for travel in hyperspace. Or perhaps just needing to use the head, it's hard to tell with Wookies. 

"What were you thinking about?" Lando asks as the uncertain silence stretches on between them.

Sinjir's first instinct is to answer truthfully; that he was wondering if making the effort to defeat the First Order wouldn't just result in another cosmic circle. In twenty years, would someone pick up the mantle of Empire,a nd inspire a third Rebellion? Has it just become a self-perpetuating cycle?

He quickly discards this instinct as worthlessly morbid, and so Sinjir lies politely and tries his hand in at flirting for the first time in years at the same time.

"Just thinking about those binders you asked me to put on you," Sinjir says, as airily as he can.

Lando doesn't double-take, but he does laugh - warm and bright. His teeth are white and straight and the whole motion carries the venerable charm of the man through to completion. He certainly hadn't gotten all of that charisma in the Rebellion.

"You keep thinking about it," Lando tells him, and Sinjir supposes from the warm tone and suggestive gaze, that that isn't a 'no' at least. "But Leia will have a job for us, too, when we get back."

"I was afraid you might say that," Sinjir says.

"Too late to back out now," Lando says, turning back around to the controls as the automated systems flash up lights for his attention. "We're there."

-

 

Rey hones in on the thread of worry she feels, trying to track the sensation, to slide deeper into the surface thoughts of the one out of place piece she encounters. She realizes that he, too, is in trouble. That something has gone wrong.

_It has to be a trap, they know something is wrong,_ she catches, and then. _Can I afford not to report this, even if it is?_

They're such strange thoughts; and the mind is a bright one. There's something about the connection to the Force that's deeper than the silent ripples that the stones the rest of the First Order makes as they pass through their lives with their eyes and ears blocked.

He's getting closer to her, she thinks. Moving carefully. Sneaking through back ways.

_I have to get out of here,_ the thought reaches her. _And I need..._

A small smile touches her features. She reaches out and tugs - just a little - trying to guide him closer. She's not sure if this really works but she _thinks_ he feels it. That there's some change or sensation that alters his path. 

So when there's a commotion outside her door a few minutes later, she gets ready. She has no weapon but the Force, but in the past that's proven to be enough. She opens her eyes, wondering if the Resistance has somehow sent an agent in alone to get her, or if there'd been another prisoner aboard the ship.

So when the door opens to reveal the solid black uniform and red-striped helmet of a TIE special forces fighter, still breathing hard and standing over the two storm troopers, it's not what she expects. Rey tenses up, ready to fight.

"You're the Jedi?" the pilot asks - or accuses, it's hard to tell. The black, bug-eyed helmet hides all of his expression behind its sleek surface and darkened goggles, suggesting anger by the two slashed red lines. 

Rey doesn't answer - had this all been a trap? The man's black flight suit covers every inch of him, and looks like it belongs to him - this isn't some hastily donned disguise. She can read the Aurebesh inscribed over the rank symbol discretely painted on his breastplate. WESK - ESK - NERN, to begin with.

"Come on," the man says. "We have to get out of here." 

"Who are you?" Rey demands, as if she hadn't just read part of his label.

"I'm a spy," he says. "Or I was a spy. Listen, these guys radio in every five minutes because General Regan is using you as bait. For me. You need to get out of here, I need to get out of here. Let's argue about who I am someplace else."

Rey can hear the first sound of beeping from within the Stormtrooper's helmets, and sees the way the spy-slash-pilot labeled 'Wen' recoils. The helmet aims down at the two crumpled forms at his feet, then back up at Rey once, before he decides he doesn't have time to convince her. He turns and leaves her door open, letting her make her own decision, and Rey has to run to catch up, then jog to keep pace as he leads her through the tangles of corridor and down into the maintenance shafts.

"What do you mean a spy?" Rey asks, keeping her voice only loud enough to carry above their footsteps. 

"I mean," Wen answers, with his attention focused directly ahead of them. "I work for the Resistance."

"What are you doing here?" Rey asks.

The pilot looks at her briefly as he continues to jog, as if she already has all of the facts required for her answer, or perhaps in a 'now's-not-the-time' way, but he continues anyway, shifting his attention away to look at the wall next to them as he continues to jog. It's a plain, grey wall, painted in the standard matte unlabeled style of the First Order.

"The _Colluder_ comes in and out of Delta base," Wen elaborates, as if that will help Rey. "The Resistance wants to know what's happening in there - and they should, it's scary stuff."

He stops suddenly, for no reason that Rey can see, and puts his hand up on the wall, feeling around on plain grey surface. "I need to get you - and this," he gestures at the back panel of his flight harness, indicating a perfectly ordinary looking flight recorder box, "back to Leia."

Wen seems to find what he's looking for and pushes - then the whole panel moves, shifting aside to reveal a dark, square hole in the wall, leading away into the blackness.

"I need your help to get out of here, and you need my help, because if your friends come after you they're going to find themselves in a world of hurt," Wen says. "The Resistance is not prepared for this. "

Rey looks into the black square, and tries to remember what this is, if she'd ever found anything like it on the big rusting hulks on Jakku.

"What's this?" she asks. "How will we see?"

"First Order secret," Wen explains, tapping his helmet at his temple to indicate an answer to her second question before he steps inside. "They disguised the access doors to the ventilation shafts after a number of instances dating back to the Rebellion era - or so hearsay suggests. Honestly, they probably had to come up with a reason why these dead-ended in a number of places to give way to the droid access corridors for the propulsion systems. Either way, it's our best way out until they figure out you're missing."

He closes the hatch behind them, plunging them into darkness.

Rey waits for her eyes to adjust, but there's no light down here - it feels like an airless, solid box. A metal tomb. The sensation of suffocation rears up when she realizes that absolutely no light enters.

"Relax," Wen's voice comes from just ahead of her. She can hear the rustle of fabric. "It's a ventilation shaft, remember? Plenty of air. Breathe deep. Don't look with your eyes."

"I couldn't even if I wanted to," Rey mutters. She doesn't like this - doesn't like relying on a stranger in the darkness, doesn't like not being in the lead or in charge.

His voice moves away some, and she stumbles forward after him, not wanting to be left behind.

"Close your eyes," he says. "It's dark but it's not silent. You're a Jedi anyway, aren't you?"

"What's that have to do with anything?" Rey asks, feeling her way forward with her arms out in front of her, skimming her feet over the floor carefully before trusting her weight. 

"I just thought you'd know a little more about relying on your other senses," he says. 

_Says the man with the HUD showing him everything,_ Rey thinks. 

"What's your name?" Wen asks, sounding even further ahead.

She hurries her steps to try and catch up with him, straining for a sign of anything in the darkness before she realizes how close she is to panic - it's an unfamiliar and acid sensation. Rey could handle anything - there is nothing to be afraid of in the darkness. 

"I'm Rey," she says. "The rest is still a secret, sorry."

"That's alright," he answers. "I know a thing or two about secrets. You can call me Wen Kentalen."

"I read it on your flight suit," Rey says, taking a deep breath, following his voice. She takes his advice at last and closes her eyes so the urge to strain them isn't so hard to resist. "I 'can call you that' - is it your real name?"

Wen makes a sound that's almost the verbal equivalent of a shrug. "I'm not sure about the reality of a lot of things anymore. I'll answer to it."

Rey's not positive she likes the sound of that, but she's come this far - and if Wen meant her any harm, he had plenty of opportunity already down here in the darkness. And now that she can't see the TIE pilot suit, she senses him the way she had before - as a connection to the Force around her. There's no anger or hostility and then - suddenly - she realizes she can almost see him. Ahead of her, like a faint light.

When she opens her eyes in surprise, it vanishes. There's only the blackness again, and she wonders what had just happened. Had she been seeing? Through the Force? 

"You okay back there?" Wen asks.

"I'm still here," Rey says, closing her eyes again, trying to gather in her focus. "It's just harder to do this than I thought."

Wen takes the hint to let her focus, and she gathers everything into herself, trying to keep her body moving forward while centering her attention inward. She feels that spark of connection within herself, and then reaches out, like she had when feeling the ocean or feeling her way outward for her friends. 

She'd never experienced the connection in this way before, never let it take the place of a sense she was deprived of - it had instead become something almost extra-sensory, an additional feeling in her stable of experiences. What she experiences now is not - quite - sight. It's not the same, but she can feel the way the Force moves around her like a current of water, the way the ripples pass out from her body and stop against the inorganic compounds of the walls and floors, and yet only pause there. The Force fills the whole space around her, and then she can sense - completely - Wen's presence in front of her. Moving through the dark with a confident pace.

After that it's easier, she can follow when he turns and where at least, though occasionally she misjudges corners and hits them. Any time her focus breaks, the sense vanishes, and it takes her a long time to focus hard enough again.

_I wonder if it ever gets any easier?_

"Rey," Wen says, coming to a stop ahead of her. "Are your eyes closed?"

"Yes," she says. 

"I'm going to open this panel a little, be ready."

The faint specter of light paints the backs of her eyelids pink and she feels relieved - immensely - to know that true sight is coming back to her soon. She risks opening one eye and even the dim light from the barely cracked panel stings. She can hear - on the other side - the sounds of troops moving around, a large echoing space. 

Rey thinks it's the hangar - so close to freedom. 

"Someone's coming in," Wen mutters, peering through the little hole. His hands are working underneath the chin of his helmet, seeming to be fastening it back on - had he had it off in the ventilation shaft?

"How did you-" she begins, but he waves her quiet, and indicates the hangar through the crack urgently. 

Then she feels it - without even having to look, the dark sensation spikes down into her, and she _knows_. She leans forward slowly, cautiously, to be sure. A solid black Upsilon-class transporter is folding itself just outside the hangar shield like a vulture getting ready to roost.

Kylo Ren has joined them - and her friends are surely coming into this trap after her.


	16. Chapter 16

The big ship stops on their tracking device out in some dark sector - one heavily controlled by the First Order, right in the old heart of their territory. The places they frequent and dominate have grown and changed, but this was where the dark spot had started growing in the body of the galaxy.

Poe pulls them out of hyperspace while they'll still be off the scanners of the big ship, leaning around Finn as best he can to look at his readouts. 

"I don't see it," Finn says, shifting over the wet spot in Poe's lap. It's gone cold and tacky and distracting, and his legs are still pretty much asleep. 

"We're not close to it," Poe says, typing a few commands in to BB-8 and looking at the responses on the readout.

"Did it move?" Finn asks, sitting up, looking attentively at what Poe's doing. "Why are you plotting another jump?"

"Well," Poe says. "We know exactly where it is, and we only have one little ship. I mean, it may be the ship that blew up the first Death Star, but if we go in there without some kind of trick, we're going to be so many little pieces before it really even matters that we're two guys in a one man jig and I can't feel my feet to work the foot controls."

Finn lifts his weight a little, bracing his arms out at the sides of the console to give Poe a little extra room, and the blood rushes back to Poe's legs in a great surge. At first, just a rushing, pumping sensation that tells him that the pain is about to be excruciating as soon as the pins and needles remind his limbs that they aren't dead weight attached to his torso. He can feel the far edges of the damp spot spread down the inside of his left thigh, and it seems like such a little thing in comparison to the flood of angry Saurian Hornets buzzing around in all the veins in his legs.

"So what do you want to do?" Finn asks. He seems to know that Poe's got a plan, and he sounds willing to go along with it.

"So you remember when you told me about how you guys got the Millenium Falcon away from that Guavian Death Gang?" Poe says.

"You're going after a Rathtar?" Finn yelps. 

"No," Poe says. "Han Solo took you guys into hyperspace from inside the hangar."

Finn goes very quiet - and Poe thinks he's probably figured the rest out. But he has BB-8 double check the calculations anyway, reminding him (and getting rebuked for it) that this is Red-5 and not Black-1. When he's sure that BB-8 has the calculations right, he turns power off of shields and onto the long-range sensors. They'll have to wait for a moment when the shield is down - which means when an approaching ship is docking. Should be pretty easy - Star Destroyers almost always have TIE patrols out when they're stationary. Helps keep little ships like the one Poe's in from ambushing them.

"We're gonna do that in reverse," Poe says. As the long range spatial indicator comes up, his hands go tight on the controls. _A ship's coming in right now!_ "And we're gonna do it right away, hang on Finn!"

-

What happens next is almost chaos, even to Rey's sharp senses. She's just rounding on Wen to tell him they have to get out of here as the blue shield over the end of the docking bay wavers and flickers, beginning to admit the command shuttle through when a brilliant flash of light and a deafening sound causes Rey to clamp her hands over her ears, dropping down next to the pilot instinctively as they both crouch down. 

The force of the object's arrival smashes the sound barrier with a shattering crack, shaking the whole hangar bay as the air inside it is suddenly forced out of the space that a ship - not a very big ship - occupies. It still carries some residual motion as it surges out of hyperspace and into real space, blowing the cover off of their hatch and rattling Rey's teeth, knocking her companion to the floor in a sprawl. 

The cargo and men scattered around the orderly hangar suddenly become a mess of broken bodies and shattering crates, metal and wood shipping boxes flying apart under first the force of the sonic blast and then the body of the X-Wing - it's _definitely_ an X-Wing, and the cockpit seems strangely full - itself. The thrusters come on but can't stop it from slamming its back end into a whole row of parked TIEs, scraping and shuddering through them, as Rey winces, still covering her ears.

By the time the red-painted X-Wing recovers, it's taken visible damage, but still flying as it slows itself, coming about to bring its powerful laser canons to bear on the scrambling First Order forces and the rounding command shuttle. 

_That's got to be Poe,_ she realizes, feeling her stomach sink. The X-Wing has more ability to maneuver in the cramped space of the hangar, blowing several docked TIES into scrap as it weaves and shifts, and after only two shots by the command shuttle rip into the Star Destroyer's unshielded internals instead of the constantly moving X-Wing, the wings fold up again and the shuttle opens the door in its belly to disgorge several elite Stormtroopers armed with heavy T-21 blasters, several more rolling down a platform with a bigger blaster on it - it looks like a modified E-Web, newer than the ones she had salvaged off of the old Imperial ships.

Unbelievably, the X-Wing slows, the canopy opens, and a figure slides down the side to drop to the ground rolling - _Finn!_

Rey realizes that Wen is shouting something, pointing across the hangar toward the unfolding scene.

"We've got to get to a ship!" he shouts over the ringing in her ears and the sound of the heavy blaster-rifle fire filling the space.

But all of that seems to go quiet when she sees Kylo Ren striding down the open ramp from the shuttle and into the chaos of the hangar, a black ghost moving through the storm. Rey starts looking for a weapon, yanking a blaster rifle to her with the Force as his attention fixes on her and locks.

Suddenly nothing exists but the two of them as she raises her blaster and Kylo Ren fires up his lightsaber. Rey has the advantage of range and calm, feeling her focus gather and sharpen.

Ren deflects the first two blaster bolts in wild arcs, just as focused on her - which is what Rey wants. It will give her friends a chance. She hopes that Wen, dressed head to toe in enemy regalia, can make it to a ship without attracting fire from Poe or Finn.

Rey focuses on the next blast, and feels the first warning touch of Kylo Ren's power reaching out toward her, seeking a hold. She fires and focuses on the blaster bolt, propelling it with the Force through his attempt to deflect, a test of her power against his.

It shimmies in the air like a fish, then slips past Ren's control, forcing him to parry with his lightsaber again, sending the shot wild into his own troops, scattering them outward.

"Rey!" Finn's voice penetrates her concentration and she thinks she sees a pilot in First Order colors scrambling up the ramp onto the Command Shuttle - and Rey gets the idea as quickly as if there had been time to communicate it.

Finn is running flat out across the hangar also, heading for the big Upsilon-class ship, and Rey realizes the alarms are blaring, smoke from damaged and burning TIEs and cargo is filling the space and Poe is still firing into the undefended walls inside the hangar, destroying as many enemy ships as he can - but this isn't the only hangar and it can't go on forever.

Rey presses forward, but her blaster is no match for Kylo Ren's lightsaber at close range, and he's still between her and the shuttle. 

She fires off two more rounds to distract him, feeling the anger boil off him as she continues to fight from a distance. Then she reaches out toward Poe, brushing her thoughts and presence against his, drawing his attention - and cannons - to her aid.

The nose of the white-and-Red-painted X-Wing swings around as Poe works the thrusters expertly to train his cannons - significantly more powerful than Rey's blaster - on Kylo Ren - and he only hesitates an instant before he opens up. Kylo Ren wheels to follow Rey's gaze as she turns it toward Poe.

It takes all of his willpower, all of his anger and rage and power with the Force to deflect the first blast,and it passes so near as to probably burn him before tearing through the wall behind him and into the depths of the Star Destroyer.

Rey feels his anger swell, and it's almost like the air around Ren vanishes, pulled in to fuel some invisible flame as Kylo Ren raises both hands and reaches past the bolts to the X-Wing itself, one hand raised in a menacing claw as he tries to snare the whole ship.

Rey rushes past behind him, running up the extended gangway and shoving out roughly at the controls with the Force to close it behind her.

Shouting is coming from the cockpit, a small compartment at the front of the shuttle and Rey steps over the bodies of the two original pilots to find Finn menacing the still-outfitted Wen with his blaster.

"I'm on your _side_ ," Wen is protesting, despite all evidence to the contrary. He has his hands up, and he's half-splayed over the seat behind him - Rey thinks Finn probably hit him. Lucky he hadn't been shot at least.

"Finn," She says sharply, to catch his attention. "He's with me."

"What?" Finn asks, and the sound of straining X-Wing engines outside lends an ominous undertone.

"He's with me - and I need him in the co-pilot seat. We have to help Poe."

Wen and Finn both take their cues, springing to action as Rey drops herself into the pilot seat and gets the ship up and going. Wen helps her over-ride the safety locks meant to keep it from being stolen, while Finn drops into an artillery position behind them.

"Is he holding back that whole-" Finn asks, taking in the scene playing beyond the viewport.

"Yes," Rey says, wondering how these things always turn into such a confusing mess. "Distract him, or Poe won't be able to get out."

Finn turns around to face the gunner's array, but Rey hears his groan of frustration and hears her own echo it as she reaches for her own controls.

The whining, straining noise of the X-Wing's engines increases, and Rey realizes Poe's got to keep them at full thrust just to keep Kylo from smashing the whole ship against the floor or sides of the hangar. 

"Finn, quick!" she says.

"I don't know how this works," he calls back. "I don't want to hit Poe!"

"Get the shield generators," Wen suggests, more levelly. "We'll never get out of here with them up."

"Our friend out there is risking his-" Rey starts.

Wen gets the shuttle going, and then suddenly works the wing actuators, folding them open and down suddenly to flight position. One scrapes ominously against the hangar wall but the other plunges straight for Kylo Ren, forcing him to scramble out of the way and dividing his attention enough to break Poe's X-Wing free. 

"The shields!" Wen repeats, and Finn finally seems to recover himself, getting his hands on the controls and aiming the laser canons at the generators on either side of the shielded entry space. The alarm klaxons get louder as the dock begins to depressurize, pulling the shuttle and Poe's ship out with the flying bodies of Stormtroopers and anything else loose on the floor of the bay.

Poe's X-Wing shoots by under it's own power and Wen follows, working the shuttle in an evasive pattern to avoid fire from the Star Destroyer itself.

"Rey, I need you to find and disable the tracking device," Wen instructs, setting her scrambling. He turns his attention to Finn, who is returning fire as best he can with the smaller canons on the shuttle. "You, get in contact with your friend. Tell him to pick some co-ordinates for a safe place to meet and send them to us."

Rey scrambles beneath the console, struggling to keep her focus on what she's doing while the ship bucks and pitches beneath her as Wen avoids Ion cannon fire. 

She looks for the tracking system connected to the navigational systems, and finds that it's integrated.

"If I pull it, we'll lose computer guided navigation," she warns.

"If you don't, they'll be on top of us so quick it won't even matter we've made the jump," Wen calls back. "Pull it!"

"I have co-ordinates!" Finn calls over both of them.

"Enter them manually," Wen says, wheeling the ship around to give them an open avenue into hyperspace.

Rey cuts the whole nest of wires free with a knife that Wen hands her out of his boot and says a silent prayer to the Force to help Finn make those entries correctly. She throws the detached bundle of wires and plasteel out onto the floor just before she feels the shuttle launch into hyperspace, and hopefully to safety.

-

"How are you doing over there, Poe?" Finn asks, waiting in the gunner's chair as Rey and the stranger check the Command Shuttle for damage and look for any signs of tracking equipment. He'd introduced himself as 'Wen', and the front of his uniform had agreed, adding a surname of Kentalen and a rank of 'Captain', leading Finn to understand that he was a First Order talent recruit and not raised from birth.

"Hot," Poe complains, and Finn can hear it in his voice. "The temperature controls are fried, and one of the canons is a loss. I'll need to put in some serious hours going over the engines and antigrav thrusters to be sure nothing crucial got weakened."

Poe sounds more clinical than victorious,and Finn realizes they're all still in crisis management mode, even though by Finn's reckoning they've absolutely won the day, leaving the Order with a bloody nose and a wounded pride.

"We could leave it and come back when we can tow it," Finn suggests, half in jest.

"Finn," Poe says, his tone at least a little lighter. "I already have to tell Luke Skywalker I beat up his X-Wing. I won't be the guy that hast to tell him that I beat up his X-wing _and_ left it somewhere in space."

Finn is glad that Poe can't see his smile over the audio-comm.

"If she's still running, I'm getting her back to base," Poe continues firmly.

"Just don't cook yourself on the way," Finn says. 

"I have Beebee-Ate monitoring the temperature," Poe says. "We can vent what gets too hot, and it's not a very long trip. How are you doing over there?"

"They're looking to see if there are any hidden tracking devices," Finn says. "I mean, I wouldn't put it past the First Order to keep a couple on Kylo Ren he doesn't know about."

"It worked out for us," Poe admits. A clatter comes across the comm, then a swear. His voice returns a little fainter, and Finn guesses he's hunting for whatever tool he lost on the floor of the cockpit.

"What about the, uh - the other guy?" Poe asks.

"I don't know. Rey says he helped her escape," Finn says. "I'm not sure if I trust him."

"What if it was just 'the right thing to do'?" Poe asks, teasing him. "I mean, not everyone in the First Order is really cut out for it, buddy. Maybe you sparked a trend; 'save a pilot, earn your freedom'?"

"He already is a pilot," Finn says. "And it's not the same. He's an Order recruit. They vet those guys very carefully."

Poe makes a little 'aha' sound, and then his voice seems to get closer again.

"I don't see much option," Poe says. "Unless you just dump him at the nearest planet." 

"He says he works for Leia," Finn says.

"I do." The pilot's voice proceeds him into the cockpit as Rey and Wen re-enter it. Rey is smudged with grease and Wen is still in his helmet, working a rag absently over his bare hands. "And I have information she needs - the Resistance has spies too, you know. We don't all have to go Bothan to get information back to you."

There's a moment of quiet and Rey jams another small electronic box into a trash jettison port, ejecting it into space with the _whush_ sound of escaping air. It punctuates Wen's words, filtered as his voice is through the helmet. 

"In fact, on the off chance that any of this is real I'd rather _not_ die," Wen continues in a softer tone, turning for the pilot's seat.

Finn can't make heads or tails of that so he looks at Rey in concern. Maybe Wen had hit his head or something.

She shrugs - she doesn't know either, but it doesn't seem to alarm her. 

"That's the only other one?" Finn asks.

"Yes," Rey says. "They probably have one on Kylo Ren himself, but two on one ship is usually enough to do the job."

Finn wouldn't know, but he trusts Rey. He turns to Wen who is bringing the ship's systems back online.

"What about in your suit?" Finn asks, meaning the heavy black flight armor, packed with First Order technology. 

"I disabled that before I broke my cover," Wen says, casually. "Is our friend in the X-Wing ready to go?"

"The sooner the better," Poe answers. "It's turning to stew over here."

"Why don't you comm ahead and warn them about the fact that we'll be landing in a First Order Command shuttle," Wen suggests. "It'll look better coming from you."

"If I had a credit for every time someone told me that," Poe says, but Finn knows that when is comm clicks off, Poe is doing exactly that. 

Finn settles back in his chair, not liking any part of this, and watches the First Order defector like a hawk, with one hand on his blaster just in case.


	17. Chapter 17

Rey feels crowded and cramped by the time they make it back to base. The welcoming green canopy seems to reach up to her, a promise that she can soon escape so much close company and find a place to be alone. Even Finn - clearly on edge in the presence of Wen - is beginning to feel too close and to hard to separate herself from. Rey doesn't miss Jakku, not exactly, but with so much action in what's really just a few days, she realizes she misses the chance for retreat at the end of the day, and not having to talk to _anybody_.

"Poe, why don't you land first?" she says, when the runway comes into view. She can see the rounded bulk of the Millennium Falcon under it's camouflage cover, and that's a sight she's content to see. 

"Glad to," Poe says. "Looks like the welcoming party is out in full force."

Rey looks and sees that the runway is lined with armored and armed Resistance soldiers. She can hardly blame them - they are, after all, landing Kylo Ren's personal ominous black command shuttle. It would hardly be the first trap that had been sprung on the Resistance. 

"Uh," Poe's voice comes back over the comm, sounding tired but also uncertain. "There's something I should mention, Rey."

"You can tell me later," Rey says. "For now, I just want to get on the ground and get out of this ship."

Poe chuckles a little, nervously. "Alright, yeah, me too. Just - it's not as bad as it looks, okay?"

Rey has no idea what that's supposed to mean, and she looks at Finn, who also shrugs.

Then, she has other things to worry about. Wen is a more-than-capable pilot, but he gives point to Rey on landing when she asks for it and keeps the bulky ship level when she needs it to be. The shuttles _could_ land on planets, but were primarily used for space travel - between Star Destroyers and outposts - and became unwieldy in atmosphere without two pilots to work the wings and thrusters. 

In the end, she puts the folded shuttle neatly on the runway between rows of readied soldiers.

Wen stands up and stretches, reaching for his helmet and Rey watches the motion acutely, finding herself curious. What did a Resistance spy look like? Probably as normal as Finn looked, under all that heavy armor he used to wear and the slick, dehumanizing black of the First Order.

In fact, Rey is so prepared for this that for a moment she doesn't notice the discrepancy. Wen has long, straight brown hair gathered at the base of his neck and curtaining his face. Clean shaven, with a strong nose and - something finally pulls at Rey as being out of place. 

Under the fringe of his bangs, there are no eyes - not even any sockets.

"How did you-?" Rey asks, unable to stop herself from blurting out the question as soon as it occurs to her - _he piloted the ship!_

Wen pulls a pair of goggles out of a gear pouch at his hip and covers up the blank space like a magic trick. Rey would never guess that there was anything out of place under the mirrored lenses. 

"I'm Miraluka," Wen says, adjusting the goggles, looking directly at her in a way that's unsettling. "I see - well, not in the way you'd define it, but I _perceive_ through the Force. It's a long story and all these nice men with guns are out there getting antsy the longer we stand in here." 

"Wait, you're a Force user?" Finn asks, getting up to follow Rey and Wen off the shuttle as Wen starts leading them. He leaves his pilot's helmet in the seat in the cockpit, and steps out into the light.

The tense atmosphere dissolves quickly as Rey and Finn walk out under their own power, and their companion is gathered up as the only potential hostile without resisting. 

Poe cuts through the crowd sweating and wet-haired, soaked through his flight suit. Rey does not indulge her desire to hug him.

"If Luke shows up and asks about Red Five, cover for me until I get out of the refresher?" he requests of his friends.

"Take your time," Rey tells him, catching whiff - and wondering what it's like in the cockpit. Bad, she'd guess.

Poes going to have a lot of explaining to do - and Rey supposes she will as well, even as the rest of her friends close in around her and Finn, asking questions and expressing how glad they are to have them both back.

"Hey, when the brass lets go of you, come find us," Jess Pava tells her. "We owe you guys a big party."

Rey can't think of anything she wants less, but she agrees anyway and escapes with Finn by her side to bring her summary of events to Luke.

-

Snap catches Poe before he makes it to his quarters, waiting where he knows he'll find Poe alone.

"You could have told us," Snap says.

"Well," Poe says, hot, sweaty, ready for a shower and clean clothes. "You know now. At the time, it was kind of a snap decision, Snap."

"Ha, ha," Snap says, without any humor.

"Hey, this is kind of a weird question," Poe says, trying to step past Snap as he pulls off his flight vest and starts to unzip his jumpsuit.

Snap leans away.

"But," Poe continues, "two bounty hunters came back with Chewie and Lando..."

"Sinjir and Jas," Snap says, a little more warmly than Poe expected. "yeah, I used to work with them when I was a kid. My mom, too."

Poe grins at Snap, hoping to cut to the end of the conversation so he can get into the 'fresher.

"Do they know any embarrassing stories?" Poe asks.

"If they do, I'm trusting the solid favor I did you to keep a lid on your curiosity," Snap says, getting out of Poe's path and snapping his fingers like his nickname implies. 

"What favor-?" Poe starts to ask, before stepping into his quarters, tossing the flight vest ahead of him.

Inside, Poe finds his half-finished project neatly completed, all of the shelves returned to upright, plants neatly replaced under glowing blue and white lights meant to simulate both sun and moonlight, and his irrigation system finished. Poe senses the handiwork of the whole squad together, making things right for when Poe came home.

Instinctively he picks out the little plant Rey left with him, and discovers it's sent out perhaps a dozen tendrils fat with buds - ready to bloom.

"Consider my curiosity stifled," Poe says, appreciative. When he turns, Snap has already gone and Poe climbs into the fresher, grateful to leave his damp clothes behind for the running water, and grateful for the generators that are able to keep it hot. It washes sweat and exertion off his body like a foreign slime, and maybe he hides in it longer than is truly necessary to avoid what will surely be a long conversation with Luke. 

Then he has to get out, put on new clothes, and rejoin the command structure. Leia has gathered them together in her board room, indicating a need for secrecy. Her aide admits Poe instantly, without preamble, and Poe enters an ongoing conversation without interrupting it at all.

"We have information on the activities at Delta base," Leia is saying, leaning over the table at the head of it like a bird crouching over a nest. "I've only begun to skim the surface of what agent Kentalen brought us,and even from that we need to move - and we need to do it now."

Poe takes stock of the room - Admirals Ackbar and Statura, probably-reinstated General Calrissian, and the bounty hunters Jas Emari and Sinjir Rath Velus. A man Poe doesn't recognize is seated at Leia's left, looking somewhat inscrutable in a pair of mirrored goggles, and brown hair barely long enough to catch up into a tie at the back of his neck. _Agent Kentalen? He looks different without the helmet..._

As the conversation continues, Poe supposes they all do. _And they can't all be as good looking as Finn is._

_Maybe they could,_ Poe allows, his tired mind drifting as Leia begins to outline her plan. 

"We know the First Order is going after targets with ties to the former Rebellion and to the New Republic Senate," Leia says.

_If they are all as hot as Finn, I'm in real trouble,_ Poe thinks, leaning back in his seat and enjoying the chance to stretch out more than a cockpit allowed.

"I'd love to beat them to the punch," Leia continues. "Lando, Jas, Sinjir, I'd like to put you in charge of a small force centered on keeping our people safe. It's no good fighting the Order if we can't rebuild afterward."

"General Organa," Sinjir says," Jas and I are already on a mission, and surely you have some fine young strapping Resistance members who _didn't_ just help one of your in-progress missions?"

"What would you like," Leia says, raking her eyes over Sinjir - Poe has never seen anyone take that as well as the former Imperial does. "Special recognition? We need your help."

"Who doesn't like special recognition?" Sinjir asks. "Though I have far less use for it than a good pint of Corellian brandy and two hours to myself for once."

"Sinjir," Jas says, with faint warning in her tone. 

Surprisingly, he takes the cue, tucking his hands behind his back in a very informal version of parade rest - it looks about 30 years rusty, to Poe's mind. 

"Alright, General Organa, you've convinced me," he says. "If someone of my advanced years is useful to your cause I am happy to be welcomed back into the fold. I don't suppose we can get the old crew back together?"

"Half the 'old crew' is stardust, and the other half is scattered behind First Order controlled sections of the galaxy," Leia observes. "But I think someone of your advanced _experience_ -"

Sinjir scoffs. Leia continues over him as if he hadn't made a sound.

"- is more than capable of recovering people who we've lost and who would like to come back," Leia says. "General Calrissian was a good first effort."

She nods at Lando across the table, and he grins in a way that's fit to melt hearts. Poe is stuck in this room full of giants and legends, and all he can do is stare starstruck at all of them, chin in his palm with very little to input. He wishes they had time to talk about the old Rebellion days, because he's heard from Nien, but the Sullustan was coy about a lot of things. 

"Well, we've become very good at finding bad guys," Sinjir says. 

"And now I want you to find good ones," Leia interrupts his dramatics with a flat expression. "General Calrissian can oversee these efforts. I'd like you to co-ordinate with Admiral Ackbar on what supplies and equipment you'll need."

"Can we have a Jedi?" Sinjir puts in, pitching his tone up like a child asking for a toy.

"I'll put it on the requisitions list," Lando says, humoring him. 

"Just find our people," she says. "We know the Empire kept a lot of hostages - if the First Order is following in their footsteps we need to get them out now before they have enough time to bend them over to the wrong side."

This quiets the room, and Poe feels the mood change. He can feel the smile on his own face slide off. Enough time with the First Order could change anyone. He has a feeling that there's more to this story in this room with these people than just what he'd experienced. It would be impractical - and damaging - for Kylo Ren to have to see to every single potential recruit and rip around in their brains until some part of them changed enough to be malleable.

Then again, maybe it wouldn't take much at all.

"We'll get you a ship," Leia says. 

"Can't I have the Falcon?" Lando requests, hands flat on the table. "I'm familiar with her and-"

"I think Rey would have something to say about that," Poe says. "But maybe you can borrow it."

He hopes that General Organa doesn't intend for them to take Finn and Rey out on their team so soon after he's gotten them back. It's part of the job, sure, but it seemed almost unfair to even think about losing them again so quickly.

_Not losing_ , he corrects himself. _Just missing, and maybe that's not even right. I'll know where they are._

Leia dismisses the meeting, and it leaves Poe to shuffle his way out of the room. It feels, suddenly, stifling with the weight of history and heroics. He wants to just go sit someplace quiet for a while, to relax with nothing on his mind but the present moment - not the past, not the future.

He has to squeeze by Sinjir in the doorway, having a low conversation with General Calrissian that's littered with the types of glances - ... _no, can't possibly be_. Poe shakes himself off, excuses himself, and tries not to let that image sink into his mind and thoughts. But just maybe...

His shared quarters are empty except for the plants. He'd hoped that Rey and Finn would have made it back by now, but despite all his trepidations about care, he thinks that having the green and living plants - each now carefully hooked into an automatic waterer - to greet him is better than nothing at all. It's changed the way the inside of his quarters smells. Before it was always the slight damp and cool of duracrete, impersonal and relatively sterile. Sometimes the walls would fill with the heated exertions of his efforts inside and change the scent. 

Now it's green and loam, wet soil. Poe likes the change - he likes the implication of stability. It could be that tomorrow, they'll have to abandon this base like they had the one before. That would mean another long journey, another new place to sleep and stay. He knows, however, the plants would not be left behind. Either he or Finn or Rey would scoop them up over any other personal possessions and that permanence, the concept of stability, would come with them. 

Maybe he should move a few onto the Falcon for Rey, now that they could be watered reliably without any extra attention.

The littlest plant's buds are thickening - and Poe looks it over. In the weeks since Rey's left it in his charge it has gotten bigger, started to drop tendrils of its own, reaching out into the environment to explore what it might encounter. He thinks, probably, that those fat white buds will soon split into flowers.

_Rey can hold me responsible for that,_ Poe thinks, as he settles back on his bunk. _Touch and go for a while there, little spider plant or whatever you are, but we both made it._  
-

Finn tenses up when Luke approaches them, sure that he'll have something to say about his X-Wing. He edges a little closer to Rey as if to shelter in her shadow.

Luke only nods politely to both of them in turn, sweeping Rey up in his train and leading her away without protest when Finn comes along. They head away from the bustle on the runway - technicians sweeping over the command shuttle to divest it of all its secrets.

He doesn't see where they take Wen, but he does see that the escort that collects him is armed, and that relaxes Finn some. Maybe everything was on the up and up, and Finn knows his mistrust is a double standard, but he can't let it go immediately.

"So, how do you feel about your first solo mission as a Jedi?" Luke asks.

"Unprepared," Rey answers honestly. "But I think improvisation is one of my stronger skills."

Luke smiles. "You did well. You brought Lando back."

"I got captured twice," Rey says. "I tried to influence Erdo's thoughts and it didn't work."

"I forgot to tell you that it doesn't work on Hutts," Luke says, smiling a little sheepishly.

"That's pretty crucial," Rey says, rounding on her master with an exasperated expression. 

Finn edges away a little - he's learned his lesson about getting between two Jedi, no matter how much he wants to stay next to Rey.

Luke weathers her anger serenely, tucking his hands into the opposite sleeves of his robe and rocking back on his heels.

"It doesn't work on Toydarians, either," Luke says. "Just so you know."

Rey just stares at him, and for a long moment Luke meets her gaze as if he's just waiting for the wisdom he's imparted to sink in.

Then he lifts his gaze and it settles on Finn like the whole weight of the universe. It freezes Finn in place like a carbonite block. Luke doesn't say anything, just gives Finn a long, lingering look, right in the eyes.

_He knows_ , Finn thinks, resisting the urge to fidget, to apologize about nine times. Finn's insides start to sink down into his boots.

Then Luke just pats Finn on the shoulder, once, and turns back to Rey.

"You both did a good job. More is coming, I'm afraid," Luke says. "After we unfold what the First Order's been up to in Delta base, we'll need everyone out there, everyone working to put a stop to it."

"Master Luke," Rey says, more seriously. "I saw - I fought Kylo Ren again."

Luke takes a deep breath and nods, but keeps his own council. Rey is here, unharmed; the rest of the details don't matter yet. They will soon - too soon, Finn guesses.

"You made it back," Luke tells her. "Enjoy that for now. Go be with your friends. We'll talk in the morning about the rest."

Rey nods, then takes Finn's hand, and that expands his heart, warms his body, and they head back for the base, ignoring everything but the fact they're home, that they can call today a victory. 

"I hope we gave Poe enough time in the refresher," Rey says.

"Why, you want it for yourself?" Finn asks.

"No, I want _Poe_ ," she says. "For both of us."

Then she smiles at Finn so mischievously that his heart skips a beat and lets herself into the room.


	18. Chapter 18

Rey and Finn find him sleeping, with BB-8 waiting patiently in the corner and beeping the softest greeting as they enter. Rey lifts her hand in the new, dim-blue glow of the room, waving gently to the droid. Finn reaches out to touch the top of BB-8's dome by way of greeting so they won't wake up Poe. He's a heavy sleeper, but it's better to be polite - besides, she'd rather wake him up nicely.

She sets down her bag and unbuckles her belt, letting the feeling of _home_ flood her. It's good to have quiet and no chattering voices and a little space to decompress for a while. She's getting used to green spaces full of life and people - somehow the people are easier to accept when it's green and growing.

Rey tracks the source of the new light that very dimly fills the room and sees that her little garden collection has been given a new home in her absence - carefully placed on risers, equipped with a light that seems currently to be mimicking moonlight. Outfitted, too, with a device to carry water to each pot. The little plant she'd given Poe has gotten bigger, and on long tendrils she can see pale white buds getting ready to bloom in the simulated moonlight.

Instinctively, Rey curls her hand around one of the tendrils,and when her skin makes contact with the bud it bursts open into a pale pink flower, throwing a seed out of an embedded pod and off into the far corner of the room, releasing a sweet and low spice burst of fragrance.

It's such a surprise that Rey chuckles a little, stepping back with a smile. It's like something she remembers from _before_ Jakku. _Jewelweed_ , she thinks - it had seed pods that burst when she'd touched them, too.

Finn comes to look at what's charmed her, putting his hands around her waist and looking over her shoulder.

"Watch," she whispers to him, reaching for another tight, waxy bud. Rey barely pushes her fingers against it before it bursts, releasing another waft of aroma - it's a nice smell, warm and sweet with a hot undercurrent. She decides she likes it.

"Huh," Finn says, reaching out. "Smells good."

"Doesn't it?" Rey says, not bothering to keep her voice as low as she had been. She feels relief at being back, playful and warming to the idea of Poe and Finn's specific company.

Finn has to roll the pod he picks between his thumb and index finger before it detonates, this time leaving the seed in Finn's hand.

Rey puts her hands under his and looks at it under the pale light. She's aware of how close he is behind her, his warm skin and breath, the way he seems to hold it as Rey leans down toward his palm. She licks the seed off his bare skin and crunches it between her teeth as much out of curiosity as desire to feel Finn's response.

It tastes sweet, nutty, a little like almond and perfumed by the scent of the bloom. Finn stiffens behind her, and she laughs a little against his palm at how easy he is to tease. Must just be a shared relief between them at survival and freedom and _home_.

"How do you know it's not poison?" Finn teases, turning Rey around so she can put her hands up on his chest and they can look at each other properly. 

"I didn't," Rey says. "I trusted you to carry me to the infirmary if I got sick."

Finn looks at her, bewildered. Rey holds the serious expression as long as she can before the smile won't be restrained any longer. It creeps free, and then Finn's answers it.

"Uh-huh," he says, catching on. "I see how it is."

She reaches up, curling her hands around Finn's neck and presses their mouths together, feeling his bare chest against her front, the warm and familiar way he kisses her with his hands sliding over her back.

Rey pulls back just a hair, looking into his dark eyes and seeing the shine in their depths, how there's a low, slow flare that matches the one in her belly.

"And how is it?" she asks Finn, leaning her body into his.

He kisses her this time, leaning forward so she backs a step and impacts the shelf Poe's built with a clatter and a fresh burst of fragrance and several more seed pods open.

She pushes Finn back, giggling and shushing him, glancing back to be sure the plants are okay. "You're going to wake up-"

She stops when she sees that Poe's already awake, watching them from the bed with his chin propped up on his palm.

"Too late," Poe says. "Not that I'm complaining about the show."

Rey grins at him, then pushes Finn over backwards onto the bed. "We invite audience participation."

Finn bounces gamely into place next to Poe. "Nice setup for the plants."

"I had some help," Poe admits, shifting up to hook his arms under Finn's, pulling him further onto the bed. "From Dad, even." 

He presses a kiss to Finn's forehead as Rey kicks her boots off.

"You had to call in the cavalry?" Rey asks, liking the suggestion of Poe's hold on Finn. She meets Poe's gaze, and for a moment they share a connection of understanding.

"Well," Poe says, tightening his grip under Finn's armpits a little, leaning down to mutter a request in Finn's ear. It processes on Finn's features as he leans into Poe's hold. Poe raises his voice again as Finn looks up at her and nods, agreeing to her unvoiced plan.

"You didn't believe me when I said I was bad with plants," Poe continues.

Rey puts one knee up on the bed and undoes the button on Finn's pants then tugs them off as he does his best to help with his arms restrained.

It leaves Finn mostly bare, with a hefty bulge in his boxers and all of his attention on her as she stands over the bed, considering her options. 

"I believed you," Rey says. "I just trusted you to figure it out."

Poe presses his answer to the side of Finn's neck with a lewd, wet sound - if he gives any answer at all. She watches Finn lean back into that contact, the way his eyes ease mostly closed but stay trained on her, eager, watching. 

She's torn between a long, drawn out session and just taking what she wants. Rey begins to pull off her clothes with both sets of eyes watching her, and Poe's hand creeps down Finn's side and over his belly to palm Finn through his boxers as Rey twists out of her pants and joins them.

The perfume of the flowers seems to flow around them, now warming up over the musky-skin scents of arousal as Rey crawls over the rough blankets with her eyes on Finn's until she's practically in his lap.

"You look beautiful," Finn says,and he means it so _much_ that Rey is almost taken aback, that she hesitates longer than intended before kissing his smile, tasting the way he does now, electric and excitement. It goes on long enough that she can feel Poe moving, stroking Finn to distract him before she pulls back and gives him a warning look over Finn's shoulder.

"Don't get impatient," she says.

"Who's impatient?" Poe asks, stroking Finn again until he gasps between them.

"Me," Finn groans. " _I'm_ impatient."

Rey puts her hand over Poe's, pressing it down toward the base of Finn's cock, and puts her mouth over the head of it, boxers and all, tasting the forming wet spot and feeling the groan through her palm on Finn's thigh as it tears out of him.

Finn kicks his knees a little wider apart as Rey gets the feel of him through his underwear, licking the sliding fabric against his skin until it's soaked and sticking. Then she presses her mouth against the side of Poe's hand - still steadying Finn's cock for her since Finn is behaving himself and honoring the spirit of having his arms held back.

She sits back, naked, on her heels and reaches for herself, sliding her fingers into the wet folds of her labia and watches the way both of them _look_ ; Finn panting just a little , and Poe with his lower lip trapped between his teeth.

"You two are a little overdressed, aren't you?" Rey suggests, stroking one finger over her clit and smiling as they rush to get rid of the clothes they have left.

She's pleased with the effect, with the way suggestion plays out in Finn peeling off his soaked boxers and then turning around to help Poe out of his dress uniform - why he'd been sleeping in it, Rey has no idea.

She watches them together, the way Finn seems to key in while Poe goes hazy and soft and permissive, leaning back as Finn presses his advantage.

Rey wades into the middle, enjoying the way the dim light plays over all that bare-and-variegated skin. Then their hands are on her, Finn's big fingers pushing her own aside on herself to stroke sweetly against her clit, hard enough to make Rey gasp and squirm against him.

"And she was so patient a few minutes ago," Poe says, from somewhere over Finn's shoulder. His pants arc up over them and onto the floor beyond the bed.

"It's easy when someone else is getting teased," Finn says, curling two fingers into her, sliding easy with how wet she is already.

"You're right," Rey sighs, grinding down against Finn, "but I think I'm ready for impatience now."

She pushes Finn over, hardly minding how that presses Poe flat beneath him, and swings up over his hips to show him what she means.

-

Later, when there's time to think - _well, sort of_ \- in the thick of things, Poe wonders about the heavy, syrupy smell drifting around them. It's heady and deep, and even while Poe is buried to the hilt in Finn, even while they're both focused and driving toward release, he's aware of the way it seems to pour into his chest with every breath. It sharpens the feelings of their fingers against his skin, seems to bring them closer and deeper into each other even as they can't possibly get any more entwined.

The slide is almost too easy, the combined efforts of Rey and Poe's fingers slicking and opening Finn for this, and that had been more than Poe really expected; to be so close and touching both of them, watching Rey ride Finn relentlessly, rocking her hips hard over Finns and keeping enough focus to reach back and help Poe prepare him.

Small wonder that Finn hadn't lasted very long, leaving Rey growling at him and shoving Finn down so she could take her pleasure with her knees on either side of his head.

Poe's thrilled just watching her assert herself, holding himself up just enough that she doesn't crush Finn or smother him. So, Poe slips in easily, lewdly, trying to distract Finn just enough while they all drink in the flower-scent drifting in the air. Rey's fiercely rushing them beyond the sedate pace they want to fall into together.

When Poe tries a hand on Finn's cock, he gets hard again slowly for Poe, groaning hard and muffled between Rey's thighs as Poe teases him along the line between pleasure and overstimulation, and he begins to feel the nearness of release in his own body; drops in a pool gathering before they overrun in flood. Charged with a sweet-hot current and sweat sprung up on Poe's skin, pleasurable this time instead of the maddening ride home in Red 5.

His thoughts are floating away even before he hits the point of release - before he hears the pitch and tone of Rey's voice change and she pushes Poe's hand away to get her own hand on Finn bring him over in time to her own release.

Time becomes a little fuzzy, but it's a sweet, blissful haze. An ocean of heat and lost tension that he thinks is only partly his in the moments he can think at all.

"Whoa," Finn says.

Poe agrees, and for just a moment when he moves his palm over Rey's sticky skin, he can feel the echo of it on his own body, and it sends a shudder down his spine before the intense sensation of _connection_ fades back.

Rey shifts just a little. "Sorry."

"No, that was great," Finn gasps, still breathing hard. "Is that the Force?"

"Well," Rey mutters - sounding just a little irritated, probably at having to answer questions rather than drift blissfully through her comedown. "That's one part of it."

"Hey guys?" Poe puts in, his voice wavering a little before he clears his throat and tries again. "Don't take this the wrong way, but are either of you wearing perfume?"

"No, one of the plants is blooming," Rey says, dreamily. "If you touch the buds on the little one they burst open."

"Uh oh," Poe says.

"What, 'uh oh'?" Finn rolls his gaze toward Poe, then reaches out to pull him closer. "It smells great."

"Too great," Poe agrees. "I think it probably affects people a little. Like, uh, _this._ "

He makes a gesture that he hopes encompasses their well-tangled bodies.

"More than a little," Rey agrees. "I can definitely feel the effects. It makes sense."

Poe pulls her close, settles in a comfortable pile half on top of Finn. In the dim light he can see her focused expression and guesses she's doing something Force related.

"How does it make sense?" Poe asks. "Plants don't exactly benefit from making animals horny..."

"A mating animal is more likely to touch a bunch of seed pods and carry the seeds away," Rey says, smugly.

Poe considers this, and then something worse occurs to him.

"Are you telling me that when all these things bloom, the whole base is going to feel like we just did?" Poe asks, worried. It hurts him to even imagine it.

Finn lifts his head and looks uncertainly at Poe, then at Rey for confirmation.

"No way," Finn says.

"Maybe we should mention this to General Organa," Poe agrees, though he's a little hesitant to be the one to do it. It will mean more or less admitting how they'd figured it out. 

Rey, on the other hand, looks thoughtful. Plotting, even. Poe isn't sure he wants to know at all, and he's _positive_ he doesn't want to know before he's gotten a full night's sleep. 

"In the morning," Finn says, yawning. "I'm beat."

Poe has to agree - now that the first surge of satisfaction has passed, he's ready to sleep like he'd had the day he did. He settles down in the warm space between Finn and the wall, yanking the wrinkled blankets up past their bare hips in case anyone comes in with an emergency without knocking in the middle of the night.

-

In the morning, Finn abandons Poe to face the music - he tries to follow Poe into the meeting with Leia, but one look from the General and Finn assumes himself dismissed to other business and glad of it.

Finn's got nice, safe paperwork to do. He even thinks he'll make use of his office. He wants to steer clear of Luke Skywalker's penetrating gaze for a few days. Just to be sure.

He's just settled into his chair and reached for the stack waiting for him when Jess Pava and Kare Kun appear, sharking into his space.

"Commander, welcome back," Jess says warmly.

"Jess, Kare," Finn says, trying to banish any embarrassment - they'll smell it like blood in the water.

"We're looking for Poe," Kare explains, by way of making an excuse to keep talking to Finn even when it's obvious Poe isn't there.

"He's with General Organa," Finn says, tapping his stack of papers on the desk.

The two pilots exchange glances. "So what'd he do to Red-Five?" Jess blurts out.

"It looks like it was raided by angry Jawas," Kare adds.

"And smells like a whole herd of Nerfs was stuffed in under the canopy," Jess agrees.

Finn realizes they're looking for gossip - that they accept him so completely thanks to Poe's lead that he's their target for juicy details.

Finn smiles at them and leans back - if he tells the story, he can keep some parts to himself.

"He made a precise hyperspace jump," Finn reveals, " _into_ the hangar bay of a Star Destroyer."

He can tell exactly how crazy it was in retrospect from their expressions. It makes Finn irrationally proud that Poe pulled it off anyway, to save Rey.

"How is that man still alive?" Kare asks.

"He did that in a T-65?" Jess sounds vaguely mortified.

Finn answers the question because he's pretty sure he knows the answer to that one. "He had Beebee-Ate time the jump, but we still hit a bunch of cargo and we had to deal with Kylo Ren..."

The pilots trade looks.

"So that really is his command shuttle?" Jess asks, eyes bright and eager. She looks sharply at Kare. "Pay up."

Kare waits for Finn to confirm, and when he nods, she digs out her wallet and passes a wad of credits to Jess.

"He took out the temperature controls, though, keeping it stable in that small area," Finn explains, hoping this will curb their curiosity and no one will examine the mess in there too closely. "So he had to fly it back hot."

"How'd you deal with Kylo Ren?" Kare asks. "The First Order is going to be livid."

"Rey distracted him, then we practically dropped one of the shuttle wings on him," Finn says. "Well, the pilot did."

"I would have liked to see that," Kare says.

"Ask Poe about it," Finn says. "If there was any response, he's the only one who got to see it."

"We will," Jess assures him. "If Luke leaves enough of him for us to talk to."

They leave Finn alone, considering his place in the Resistance and how he's come to be there. It's a great place to be, and Finn had barely stumbled into it, fitting almost by accident between two brave, wonderful people who he loved. For other newcomers, it must be more difficult. Especially those with ties to the First Order, where everything is regimented and people become cogs.

His thoughts sit there and stick on it. He's not sure he trusts Wen yet, but how much of that is just all of the indoctrination he'd endured to make him wary and unsympathetic to Resistance spies. It's stuck, even after Finn's been forced to disregard almost everything else he was taught about the Resistance.

Finn taps his stack of papers against the desk one more time and makes up his mind.

He's going to grow and change - to keep growing and changing, and he's going to help others do it, too.


	19. Epilogue

"All he had to do was _look_ at me and I knew he knew everything," Poe confides, as they enjoy a few hours together in the grass just off base. "I mean, _everything_. I feel like he knows about that time I peed on the magic tree when I was eight."

"I tried to warn you," Finn says. "but oh no, 'that's not how the Force works'."

"That is _exactly_ how the Force works," Rey says, sounding somewhat exasperated. "I can't believe you had sex in-"

"Don't be jealous," Poe says, grinning at her.

"I'm not," Rey says. "Finn said it was really cramped."

"You guys already gossiped about it?" Poe asks, rolling over onto his front to give them both a disbelieving look.

"Well, we had to catch up quickly so we'd present a unified front when we got back," Rey says. "Besides, that's quality gossip."

Poe agrees with a back and forth motion of his head, as if allowing that it must be while still not believing that it _should_ be.

"So what next?" Rey asks.

"Finn and I are supposed to go through the data on Delta base and come up with a strike plan. They're creating some kind of super-soldier in there based on a couple of old Imperial projects, so..."

"Hopefully we can rescue some of them," Finn says, a little more seriously "Whatever they're going through is probably pretty terrible."

"Buddy, you don't know what they'll be like," Poe says. "You came out amazing, but it won't be the same."

"I know," Finn says, "but if we can help them, we should."

Nobody disagrees.

"I have more training," Rey admits.

"Finer points of Jedi Mind Tricks?" Poe asks, easing closer to both of them.

"No. While Wen's still here, Luke thinks it's a good idea to learn Force Sight from him," she says. "It could be useful."

"What do you mean 'while he's still here'?" Finn asks. "They're not going to try and put him back as a spy, are they?"

Rey shakes her head. "I think he plans on going after General Regan with Lando's crew. Either way, if Kylo Ren's on the move again, we'll have to be careful."

For a moment, all three of them are quiet, contemplating the future - but not afraid of it. Rey holds Finn's hand, and on his other side, he reaches out for Poe and they know - maybe through some connection to the Force - that as long as they're together, they can face it.

[END.]

**Author's Note:**

> -Whew! Been waiting a while to get this one to you, but here's the whole thing in one fell swoop.  
> -Couldn't resist throwing in a little sex pollen with the plant subplot, sorry.  
> -Wen Kentalen you may recognize from Let it Come, Let it Go; he's my recurring Star Wars OC - there are also several others in this fic that are original.  
> -General Regan is named after a Shakespeare villain.  
> -MUCH thanks to my artist, Paperheartlines, and my really kind beta reader, Bjomolf, both of whom were great to work with.


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